Communist Party of the Soviet Union
–
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 19

1.
Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the Soviet leader. His rule is best known for his liberalization of political and social life, and the end of terror as a means of social control

3.
The Brezhnev era is commonly referred to by historians as the Era of Stagnation, a term coined by CPSU General Secretary Gorbachev

4.
Gorbachev, the last leader of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, as seen in 1986

Andrey Andreyev (politician)
–
Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev was a Soviet Communist politician who rose to power during the rule of Joseph Stalin, joining the Politburo as a candidate member in 1926 and as a full member in 1932. Andreyev also headed the powerful Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party in 1930 and 1931 then again continuously from 1939 until 1952. After th

1.
Andreyev in 1924

Sukhan Babayev

1.
Kaikhaziz Atabayev

Mir Jafar Baghirov
–
Mir Jafar Baghirov Abbas oglu was the communist leader of the Azerbaijan SSR from 1932 to 1953, under the Soviet leadership of Joseph Stalin. Born in Quba of Baku Governorate in 1896, Baghirov studied pedagogy in Petrovsk, during 1915-1917, M J. Baghirov worked as a school teacher in a village in Khudat. After the Soviet takeover of Azerbaijan, Bag

Nikolai Baibakov
–
Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov was a Soviet statesman, economist and Hero of Socialist Labor. He finished secondary school in 1928 and entered the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute, in 1935, he was drafted into the armed forces. After completing his service, he was appointed chief of the oilfield production department in an industrial comple

1.
Nikolai Baibakov Никола́й Байбако́в

Leonid Brezhnev
–
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in duration, during Brezhnevs rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dra

Nikolai Bulganin
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Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and was recruited in 1918 into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regimes political police, after the Russian Civil War, he became an industrial manager and worked in the electricity administration until 1927. He was director of the Moscow electricity sup

1.
Bulganin at the Geneva Summit on reunification and disarmament of Germany, July 1955

2.
Bulganin and Khrushchev in India

Aleksandr Vasilevsky
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Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He was the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, Vasilevsky began his military career during World War I, earning the rank of captain

Kliment Voroshilov
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Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnye, Bakhmut district, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, in the Russian Empire, however, according to the Soviet Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, Voroshilov himself

1.
Bobojon Ghafurov on a Tajik banknote issued in honor of the 90th anniversary of his birth.

Andrei Gromyko
–
Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet or Grim Grom, Gromykos p

Georgy Zhukov
–
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, was a career officer in the Red Army of the Soviet Union who became Chief of General Staff, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defence and a member of the Politburo. During World War II he participated in battles, ultimately commanding the 1st Belorussian Front in the Battle of Berlin. In recognition of Zhukovs ro

Arseny Zverev
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Arseny Grigoryevich Zverev was a Soviet Russian politician, economist and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Stalin and Khrushchev, but culminated during the Stalin years. Zverev was born in a village just outside Moscow. After years in politics, he rose to prominence as a Deputy Commissar of Finance. As Deputy Commissar of Finance he was

1.
Arseny Zverev

Lazar Kaganovich
–
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin. At his death in 1991, he was the last surviving Old Bolshevik, the Soviet Union itself outlived him by a mere five months. Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate,

Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
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Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born at Alexeyevka in Belgorod Oblast to a Ukrainian working-class family and he graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute. He became a mem

1.
Andrei Kirilenko Андрей Кириленко

Frol Kozlov
–
Frol Romanovich Kozlov was a Soviet politician, and a Hero of Socialist Labor. Kozlov was born in the village of Loshchinino, Ryazan Province, between 1953 and 1957, Kozlov was the first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast CPSU Committee. In July 1959, he visited the secretive Bohemian Grove encampment in northern California, at the time of his remov

1.
Frol Kozlov Фрол Козло́в

Ivan Konev
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In 1956, as the Commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet armoured divisions. Konev was born on 28 December 1897 into a peasant family near Podosinovets in Vologda Governorate and he had little formal education and worked as a lumberjack. In the spring of 1916, he was conscripted into the Imper

1.
Ivan Stepanovich Konev

2.
Konev at the liberation of Prague by the Red Army in May 1945.

Alexei Kosygin
–
Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War. Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working-class family and he was conscripted into the labour army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Armys demobilisation in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. Kosygin re

Vasily Kuznetsov (politician)
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Kuznetsov was born in Sofilovka, Kostroma Governorate. He joined the Communist Party in May 1927 and he took a break from his engineering education when he went to the United States to study metal processing at Carnegie Mellon University from 1931 to 1933. Kuznetsov held a variety of government and Communist Party positions beginning in 1940 and he

1.
Vasili Kuznetsov

Dinmukhamed Konayev
–
Dinmukhamed Akhmetuly Kunayev was a Kazakh Soviet communist politician. Kunayev, the son of a Kazakh clerk, was born at Verny, now Almaty and he graduated from the Institute of Non-Ferrous and Fine Metallurgy in Moscow in 1936, which enabled him to become a machine operator. By 1939 he had become engineer-in-chief of the Pribalkhashatroi mine, and

1.
Dinmukhamed Konayev Дінмұхамед Қонаев

2.
Nygmet Nurmakov

Otto Wille Kuusinen
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Kuusinen was born to the family of village tailor Wilhelm Juhonpoika Kuusinen in Laukaa, Finland. Ottos mother died when he was two old, and the family then moved to Jyväskylä. Kuusinen graduated from the Jyväskylä lyceum in May 1900 and entered Helsinki University the same year and his main subjects were philosophy, aesthetics, and art history. Ku

Georgy Malenkov
–
Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician and Communist Party leader. His family connections with Vladimir Lenin sped his promotion in the party and this brought him into close association with Joseph Stalin, and he was heavily involved in the purges of the 1930s. During World War II, he was given responsibility for the Soviet missile

Rodion Malinovsky
–
Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was a Soviet military commander in World War II, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and Defense Minister of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s. He contributed to the defeat of Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad. During the post-war era, he made a contribution to the strengthening of the Soviet Union as a military

1.
Rodion Malinovsky Родио́н Малино́вский

2.
The Grand Meritorious Military Order, 1st Class (Indonesia, 1962)

3.
Medal "20 Years of the Bulgarian People's Army" (1964)

Vasil Mzhavanadze
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Dismissed after a corruption scandal, he was replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze. Mzhavanadze served in the Red Army as a commissar during World War II. After the war, he became deputy commander for political affairs in the Kiev military district in the Ukrainian SSR, Georgia was at this time ruled by supporters of Lavrentiy Beria, who had been the Fir

1.
Vasil Mzhavanadze

Anastas Mikoyan
–
Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. Mikoyan became a convert to the Bolshevik cause. He was a supporter of Stalin during the immediate post-Lenin years. During Stalins rule, Mikoyan held several governmental posts, including that of Minister of Foreign T

Nikolay Mikhailov
–
Nikolay Mihaylov is a Bulgarian footballer who currently plays as a goalkeeper for Turkish side Mersin İdmanyurdu and for the Bulgarian national team. Maria Petrova a prominent world champion in rhythmic gymnastics has been his stepmother since 1998, talented Mihaylov started as a youngster with home country top team Levski Sofia, making his full 9

1.
Nikolay Mihaylov

2.
Mihaylov at Sofia airport.

Vyacheslav Molotov
–
Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. He served as First Deputy Premier from 1942 to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev, Molotov retired in 1961 after several years of obs

Kirill Moskalenko
–
Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko was a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Moskalenko was born in the village of Grishino, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire and he attended a number of military academies and joined the Red Army in 1920 and fought on various fronts during the Russian Civil War. During the Soviet-Finnish War, he was the commander of a

1.
Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko.

Imam Mustafayev
–
Imam Dashdemir oglu Mustafayev was an Azerbaijani politician and First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR. Son of a peasant, he was born in a village of the Qakh region in Azerbaijan. In 1928 he graduated from the Zaqatala Agricultural Technical School and in 1932 - the Institute of Agriculture of Azerbaijan, since th

Nuritdin Mukhitdinov
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Nuritdin Mukhitdinov was a Soviet politician. He was also the Soviet ambassador to Syria between 1968 and 1977, Mukhitdinov was born in the village Allan near Tashkent in a family of Uzbek farmers. After finishing an Uzbek-language school, in 1934 he was sent to the University of Trade in Moscow and he graduated in 1938 and worked in the Communist

Nikolai Patolichev
–
Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev was Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1958 to 1985. Prior to that, he was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1950 to 1956, after working in factories, he became a Komsomol activist. From an early age, Joseph Stalin had taken an interest in Patolichev, nikol

Mikhail Pervukhin
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Mikhail Georgievich Pervukhin was a Soviet official during the Stalin Era, Khrushchev Era and the early Brezhnev Era. He served as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice-Premier of the Soviet Union and he was born on 14 October 1904 in the village of Yuryuzansky Zavod, Ufa governorate, Russian Empire to a Russian

1.
Mikhail Pervukhin Михаи́л Перву́хин

Nikolai Podgorny
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Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 1957 to 1963 and he was replaced as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1977 by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. That same year he lost his seat in the Political Burea

1.
Podgorny in 1963

2.
Podgorny (left, bottom) conferring the Order of Lenin upon the Komsomol; Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov are also present

Dmitry Polyansky

1.
Dmitry Polyansky Дми́трий Поля́нский

Panteleimon Ponomarenko
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Panteleimon Kondratevich Ponomarenko was a general in the Red Army before becoming a Soviet administrator in Belarus and then Kazakhstan. He was born in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, from 1938 to 1947, Ponomarenko was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and from 1944 to 1948, also the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Byelorus

1.
Panteleimon Ponomarenko

Alexander Puzanov

1.
Alexander Puzanov Александр Пузанов

Maksim Saburov
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Maksim Zakharovich Saburov was a Soviet engineer, economist and politician, three-time Chairman of Gosplan and later First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union. He was involved in the Anti-Party Groups attempt to displace Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, Saburov was born in 1900 in the town of Druzhkivka in what is now Ukraine. He joined the Communist Part

1.
Maksim Saburov Максим Сабуров

Vasily Sokolovsky
–
Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky was a Soviet military commander. Sokolovsky was born into a peasant family in Kozliki, a town in the province of Grodno. He worked as a teacher in a school, where he took part in a number of protests. He joined the Red Army in February 1918 and he began his formal military schooling in 1919, but was frequently called up

Mikhail Suslov
–
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the power separation within the Communist Party. His hardline attitude toward change made him one of the foremost anti-reformist Soviet leaders, bor

1.
Mikhail Suslov Михаил Суслов

Dmitriy Ustinov
–
Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death. Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his father went to Samarkand. Shortly after that, in 1922, his father died, in 1923, he and his mother, Yevrosinya Martinovna, moved to t

Yekaterina Furtseva
–
Furtseva was born in Vyshny Volochyok. Until the 1940s, she worked as a weaver at one of Moscows textile factories. She had been a party worker in Kursk and the Crimea. Furtsevas party career started under Joseph Stalin, gradually, she became active in Komsomol affairs and rose to the position of Secretary of the Moscow City Council in 1950. She ga

1.
Yekaterina Furtseva in 1964

Nikita Khrushchev
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Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, Khrushchevs party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev w

Nikolai Shvernik
–
Nikolay Mikhailovich Shvernik was a Soviet politician and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from March 19,1946 until March 15,1953. Though the titular Soviet head of state, Shvernik had, in fact, Shvernik was born in St. Petersburg and joined the Bolsheviks in 1905. In 1924 he became a Peoples Commissar in the Russian Soviet Federativ

1.
Nikolay Shvernik Николай Шверник

Alexander Shelepin
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Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin was a Soviet state security officer and party statesman. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Shelepin was born in Voronezh, according to one source the son of a railway official. He became an official of the Communist Youth League in 1943, and at the head of the succes

1.
Alexander Shelepin Алекса́ндр Шеле́пин

Dmitri Shepilov
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Dmitri Trofimovich Shepilov was a Soviet politician and Minister of Foreign Affairs who joined the abortive plot to oust Nikita Khrushchev from power in 1957. Dmitri Shepilov was born in Askhabad in the Transcaspian Oblast of the Russian Empire in a family of Russian ethnicity. He graduated from the Law School of the Moscow State University in 1926

1.
Dmitri Shepilov in 1955

Terenty Shtykov
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Shtykovs support for Kim Il-sung was crucial in Kims rise to power, and the two persuaded Stalin to allow the Korean War to begin in June 1950. A protégé of the influential politician Andrei Zhdanov, General Shtykov served as a commissar during World War II. Through direct access to Joseph Stalin, Shtykov became the supreme ruler of North Korea. As

1.
Terentii Fomich Shtykov

2.
General Shtykov.

3.
Terentii Shtykov leaving the first meeting of the Joint Soviet-American Commission on Korea at Deoksu Palace in 1946.

Mikhail Yasnov
–
Mikhail Alekseyevich Yasnov was a Soviet politician. He was Chairman of the Moscow City Executive Committee and head of Moscow in 1950–1956, in 1956–1957 he was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR. Between 1957 and 1966 he was First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, in 1950–1954 he was Chairman of th

1.
Mikhail Yasnov Михаил Яснов

Ivan Bagramyan
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Ivan Khristoforovich Bagramyan, also known as Hovhannes Khachaturi Baghramyan, was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union of Armenian origin. During World War II, Bagramyan was the first non-Slavic military officer to become a commander of a Front and he was among several Armenians in the Soviet Army who held the highest propor

2.
Prior to the revolution of 1917, Stalin played an active role in fighting the Russian government. Here he is shown on a 1911 information card from the files of the Russian police in Saint Petersburg.

3.
A group of participants in the 8th Congress of the Russian Communist Party, 1919. In the middle are Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, and Mikhail Kalinin.

LIST OF IMAGES

1.
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
–
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union, abbreviated in English as CPSU, was the founding and ruling political party of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The party was founded in 1912 by the Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin which seized power in the aftermath of the October Revolution of 1917. The party was dissolved on 29 August 1991 on Soviet territory soon after a failed coup détat and was abolished on 6 November 1991 on Russian territory. The highest body within the CPSU was the party Congress, which convened every five years, when the Congress was not in session, the Central Committee was the highest body. Because the Central Committee met twice a year, most day-to-day duties and responsibilities were vested in the Politburo, the Secretariat, and the Orgburo. The party leader was the head of government and held the office of either General Secretary, Premier or head of state, or some of the three offices concurrently—but never all three at the same time. The CPSU, according to its party statute, adhered to Marxism–Leninism, a based on the writings of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx. The party pursued state socialism, under which all industries were nationalized, a number of causes contributed to CPSUs loss of control and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Some historians have written that Gorbachevs policy of glasnost was the root cause, Gorbachev maintained that perestroika without glasnost was doomed to failure anyway. Others have blamed the stagnation and subsequent loss of faith by the general populace in communist ideology. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, the worlds first constitutionally socialist state, was established by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October Revolution. Immediately after the Revolution, the new, Lenin-led government implemented socialist reforms, including the transfer of estates, in this context, in 1918, RSDLP became Russian Communist Party and remained so until 1997. Lenin supported world revolution he sought peace with the Central Powers. The treaty was voided after the Allied victory in World War I, in 1921, Lenin proposed the New Economic Policy, a system of state capitalism that started the process of industrialization and recovery from the Civil War. On 30 December 1922, the Russian SFSR joined former territories of the Russian Empire in the Soviet Union, on 9 March 1923, Lenin suffered a stroke, which incapacitated him and effectively ended his role in government. He died on 21 January 1924 and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, after emerging victorious from a power struggle with Trotsky, Stalin obtained full control of the party and Stalinism was installed as the only ideology of the party. The partys official name was All-Union Communist Party in 1925, Stalins political purge greatly affected the partys configuration, as many party members were executed or sentenced for slave labour. Happening during the timespan of the Great Purge, fascism had ascened to power in Italy, seeing this as a potential threat, the Party actively sought to form collective security alliances with Anti-fascist western powers such as France and Britain

Communist Party of the Soviet Union
–
Khrushchev succeeded Stalin as the Soviet leader. His rule is best known for his liberalization of political and social life, and the end of terror as a means of social control
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
–
The Brezhnev era is commonly referred to by historians as the Era of Stagnation, a term coined by CPSU General Secretary Gorbachev
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
–
Gorbachev, the last leader of the CPSU and the Soviet Union, as seen in 1986

2.
Andrey Andreyev (politician)
–
Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev was a Soviet Communist politician who rose to power during the rule of Joseph Stalin, joining the Politburo as a candidate member in 1926 and as a full member in 1932. Andreyev also headed the powerful Control Commission of the Soviet Communist Party in 1930 and 1931 then again continuously from 1939 until 1952. After the death of Stalin Andreyev was removed from the Politburo, andrey Andreyevich Andreyev was the son of a peasant peasant family. Andreyev left the village to work as a worker, assuming a position in a munitions factory during World War I. Andreyev was married to Dora Khazan, who was a student along with Stalins second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, together the couple had two children, a son named Vladimir and a daughter named Olga. Andreyev joined the Bolshevik Party in 1914 and he was a member of the Politburo from 1932 until 1952. Andreyev was a Chairman of the Soviet of the Union from 1938 until 1946 and directed the partys powerful Control Commission during 1930-1931, in 1949 he was briefly Peoples Commissar for Agriculture. This was also the year of the Leningrad case for which Andreyev built up a case against Nikolai Voznesensky, Andreyev was dismissed from Politburo in 1952, although he remained a vice-premier of the Soviet government. Andreyev fell from grace in 1953 following the Central Committee Plenary Meeting (convened immediately after Lavrentiy Berias dismissal, after 1953 Andreyev was made a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a largely ceremonial position. Andrey Andreyev died 5 December 1971, Andreyev is remembered for having loved the music of Tchaikovsky, mountaineering, and nature photography. During his life Andreyev was four times awarded the Order of Lenin, the Order of the October Revolution and he is the namesake of the AA-20 locomotive, which he is credited for sponsoring as the head of the Soviet railway system from 1931 to 1935

Andrey Andreyev (politician)
–
Andreyev in 1924

3.
Mir Jafar Baghirov
–
Mir Jafar Baghirov Abbas oglu was the communist leader of the Azerbaijan SSR from 1932 to 1953, under the Soviet leadership of Joseph Stalin. Born in Quba of Baku Governorate in 1896, Baghirov studied pedagogy in Petrovsk, during 1915-1917, M J. Baghirov worked as a school teacher in a village in Khudat. After the Soviet takeover of Azerbaijan, Baghirov was appointed the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Karabakh region of Azerbaijan and it was reported that Baghirov worked also for the Azerbaijan Democratic Republics police. In 1927 through 1929, he served as the director of Department for Water Distribution of Transcaucasia, from February 1921 to May 1927 and December 1929 to August 1930, Baghirov was the head of state security services. In 1932, Baghirov became the Peoples Commissar of Azerbaijan SSR, in 1953, the bureau of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Communist Party appointed Baghirov to head the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR. After Stalins death in March 1953, Baghirov was accused of conducting repression, arrested in 1954, in his final 17-minute speech before the court, he favored the sentence and refused to apply for any pardon. According to some sources he was expelled to Siberia, where he later died, Mir Jafar Baghirov is a controversial figure in Azerbaijani history. By 1940 an estimated 70,000 Azeris had died as a result of carried out under Baghirov. The intelligentsia was decimated, broken, and eliminated as a social force, however, Baghirov was also successful in resisting the Armenian demands to cede the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast of the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. He was credited for treating his son as an ordinary Soviet citizen. A Satire about Mir Jafar Baghirov by Azerbaijani writer Mir Jalal

4.
Nikolai Baibakov
–
Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov was a Soviet statesman, economist and Hero of Socialist Labor. He finished secondary school in 1928 and entered the Azerbaijan Oil and Chemistry Institute, in 1935, he was drafted into the armed forces. After completing his service, he was appointed chief of the oilfield production department in an industrial complex in the USSR. Later he was promoted to engineer, then general director. He was in charge of evacuating oil industry facilities to the regions during the Nazi invasion. Then he was appointed as narkom of the oil Industry of the USSR in 1944 serving until 1946. Because of his success in the planning of the oil sector of the Soviet Union and experience in economics. Baibakov, a Top Soviet Economic Official, Dies at 97

Nikolai Baibakov
–
Nikolai Baibakov Никола́й Байбако́в

5.
Leonid Brezhnev
–
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in duration, during Brezhnevs rule, the global influence of the Soviet Union grew dramatically, in part because of the expansion of the Soviet military during this time. His tenure as leader was marked by the beginning of an era of economic, Brezhnev was born in Kamenskoye into a Russian workers family in 1906. After graduating from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum, he became an engineer in the iron and steel industry. He joined Komsomol in 1923, and in 1929 became a member of the CPSU. He was drafted into military service during World War II. While at the helm of the USSR, Brezhnev pushed for détente between the Eastern and Western countries. However, in December 1981 he decided not to intervene in Poland, instead allowing the countrys government to impose martial law. After years of declining health, Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 and was succeeded in his post as General Secretary by Yuri Andropov. Brezhnev had fostered a cult of personality, although not nearly to the degree as Stalin. Mikhail Gorbachev, who would lead the USSR from 1985 to 1991, denounced his legacy, in spite of this, opinion polls in Russia show Brezhnev to be the most popular Russian leader of the 20th century. Brezhnev was born on 19 December 1906 in Kamianske in Ukraine, to metalworker Ilya Yakovlevich Brezhnev and his wife and his parents used to live in Brezhnevo before moving to Kamenskoe. Brezhnevs ethnicity was specified as Ukrainian in some documents, including his passport, like many youths in the years after the Russian Revolution of 1917, he received a technical education, at first in land management where he started as a land surveyor and then in metallurgy. He graduated from the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum in 1935 and became an engineer in the iron. Brezhnev joined the Communist Party youth organisation, the Komsomol, in 1923, in 1935 and 1936, Brezhnev served his compulsory military service, and after taking courses at a tank school, he served as a political commissar in a tank factory. Later in 1936, he director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Metallurgical Technicum. In 1936, he was transferred to the center of Dnipropetrovsk and, in 1939, he became Party Secretary in Dnipropetrovsk. As a survivor of Stalins Great Purge of 1937–39, he was able to quickly as the purges created numerous openings in the senior and middle ranks of the Party

Leonid Brezhnev
–
Brezhnev in East Berlin in 1967
Leonid Brezhnev
–
Young Brezhnev with his wife Victoria
Leonid Brezhnev
–
Brezhnev with Nikita Khrushchev during the war
Leonid Brezhnev
–
Khrushchev in 1963, one year before his ousting

6.
Nikolai Bulganin
–
Bulganin was born in Nizhny Novgorod, the son of an office worker. He joined the Bolshevik Party in 1917 and was recruited in 1918 into the Cheka, the Bolshevik regimes political police, after the Russian Civil War, he became an industrial manager and worked in the electricity administration until 1927. He was director of the Moscow electricity supply in 1927–1931, in 1931–1937, Bulganin was chairman of the executive committee of the Moscow City Soviet. In 1934, the 17th Congress of the Communist Party elected Bulganin a candidate member of the Central Committee, a loyal Stalinist, he was promoted rapidly as other leaders fell victim to Joseph Stalins Great Purge of 1937–38. In July 1937, he was appointed Prime Minister of the Russian Republic and he became a full member of the Central Committee later that year and, in September 1938, became Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union and head of the State Bank of the USSR. During World War II, Bulganin played a role in the government and Red Army. He was given the rank of Colonel-General and was a member of the State Defense Committee and he was appointed Deputy Commissar for Defence in 1944 and served as Stalins principal agent in the High Command of the Red Army. In 1946 he became Minister for the Armed Forces and was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union and he also became a candidate member of the Politburo of the Communist Party. He was again Deputy Prime Minister of the Soviet Union, under Stalin, in 1948 he became a full member of the Politburo. After Stalins death in March 1953, Bulganin moved into the first rank of the Soviet leadership and he was an ally of Nikita Khrushchev during his power struggle with Georgy Malenkov, and in February 1955 he succeeded Malenkov as Premier of the Soviet Union. He was generally seen as a supporter of Khrushchevs reforms and destalinization and he and Khrushchev travelled together to India, Yugoslavia and Britain, where they were known in the press as the B and K show. In his memoirs, however, Khrushchev recounted that he believed that he couldnt rely on fully, the threatening letters actually helped the British and French at the United Nations, since they ensured that all of NATO was committed to defend the UK and France from a Soviet attack. By 1957, however, Bulganin had come to share the doubts held about Khrushchevs reformist policies by the group led by Vyacheslav Molotov. In June, when the tried to remove Khrushchev from power at a meeting of the Politburo. When the dissenters were defeated and removed from power, Bulganin survived for a while, but in March 1958, at a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev forced his resignation. He was appointed chairman of the Soviet State Bank, a job he had two decades before, but in September Bulganin was removed from the Central Committee and deprived of the title of Marshal. He was dispatched to Stavropol as chairman of the Regional Economic Council, a token position, nikolai Bulganin at Find a Grave

Nikolai Bulganin
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Bulganin at the Geneva Summit on reunification and disarmament of Germany, July 1955
Nikolai Bulganin
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Bulganin and Khrushchev in India

7.
Aleksandr Vasilevsky
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Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky was a Russian career officer in the Red Army who was promoted to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1943. He was the Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces and Deputy Minister of Defense during World War II, Vasilevsky began his military career during World War I, earning the rank of captain by 1917. At the start of the October Revolution and the Civil War he was conscripted into the Red Army, after the war, he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming a regimental commander by 1930. In this position, he showed skill in organizing and training his troops. Vasilevskys talent was noticed, and in 1931 he was appointed a member of the Directorate of Military Training, in 1937, following Stalins Great Purge, he was promoted to General Staff officer. In July 1945, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Soviet forces in the Far East, executing the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, after the war, he became the Soviet Defense Minister, a position he held until Stalins death in 1953. With Nikita Khrushchevs rise, Vasilevsky began losing power and was pensioned off. After his death, he was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis in recognition of his past service, Vasilevsky was born on September 30,1895 in Novaya Golchikha in the Kineshma Uyezd in a family of Russian ethnicity. Vasilevsky was the fourth of eight children and his father, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vasilevsky, was a priest to the nearby St. Nicholas Church. His mother, Nadezhda Ivanovna Sokolova, was the daughter of a priest in the village of Ugletz. Vasilevsky reportedly broke off all contact with his parents after 1926 because of his Communist Party membership and his duties in the Red Army. However, the family resumed relations in 1940, following Joseph Stalins suggestion that they do so, according to Vasilevsky, his family was extremely poor. His father spent most of his working to earn money. In 1897, the moved to Novopokrovskoe, where his father became a priest to the newly built Ascension Church. In 1909, he entered Kostroma seminary, which required considerable financial sacrifice on the part of his parents, the same year, a ministerial directive preventing former seminarists from starting university studies initiated a nationwide seminarist movement, with classes stopping in most Russian seminaries. Vasilevsky, among others, was expelled from Kostroma, and only returned several months later, after the demands had been satisfied. According to his own words, he was overwhelmed with patriotic feelings, Vasilevsky took his exams in January 1915 and entered the Alexander Military Law Academy in February. As he recalls, I did not decide to become an officer to start a military career, I still wanted to be an agronomist and work in some remote corner of Russia after the war

8.
Kliment Voroshilov
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Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, popularly known as Klim Voroshilov, was a prominent Soviet military officer and politician during the Stalin era. Voroshilov was born in the settlement of Verkhnye, Bakhmut district, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, in the Russian Empire, however, according to the Soviet Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, Voroshilov himself alluded to his Ukrainian heritage and to the previous family name of Voroshilo. Voroshilov joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1905, following the Russian Revolution of 1917, Voroshilov became a member of the Ukrainian Council of Peoples Commissars and Commissar for Internal Affairs along with Vasiliy Averin. He was well known for aiding Joseph Stalin in the Military Council, Voroshilov was active as a commander of the Southern Front during the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War while with the 1st Cavalry Army. As Political Commissar serving co-equally with Stalin, Voroshilov was responsible for the morale of the 1st Cavalry Army, Voroshilovs efforts as Commissar did not prevent a resounding Polish victory at the Battle of Komarów or regular outbreaks of murderous anti-Semitic violence within the Cavalry armys ranks. Voroshilov headed the Petrograd Police during 1917 and 1918, Voroshilov served as a member of the Central Committee from his election in 1921 until 1961. Frunzes political position adhered to that of the Troika, but Stalin preferred to have a close, Frunze was urged by a group of Stalins hand-picked doctors to have surgery to treat an old stomach ulcer, despite previous doctors recommendations to avoid surgery and Frunzes own unwillingness. He died on the table of a massive overdose of chloroform. Voroshilov became a member of the newly formed Politburo in 1926. Voroshilov was appointed Peoples Commissar for Defence in 1934 and a Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1935 and he played a central role in Stalins Great Purge of the 1930s, denouncing many of his own military colleagues and subordinates when asked to do so by Stalin. Voroshilov personally signed 185 documented execution lists, fourth among the Soviet leadership after Molotov, Stalin, during World War II, Voroshilov was a member of the State Defense Committee. Voroshilov followed this retort by smashing a platter of roast suckling pig on the table, nikita Khrushchev said it was the only time he ever witnessed such an outburst. Voroshilov was nonetheless made the scapegoat for the failures in Finland. He was later replaced as Defense Commissar by Semyon Timoshenko, Voroshilov was then made Deputy Premier responsible for cultural matters. Voroshilov initially argued that thousands of Polish army officers captured in September 1939 should be released, after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Voroshilov became commander of the short-lived Northwestern Direction, controlling several fronts. In September 1941 he commanded the Leningrad Front, Stalin had a political need for popular wartime leaders, however, and Voroshilov remained as an important figurehead. In 1945–1947 Voroshilov supervised the establishment of the communist regime in postwar Hungary, in 1952, Voroshilov was appointed a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee. Stalins death on 5 March 1953 prompted major changes in the Soviet leadership, Voroshilov, Malenkov, and Khrushchev brought about the 26 June 1953 arrest of Lavrenty Beria after Stalins death

9.
Andrei Gromyko
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Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko was a Soviet communist politician during the Cold War. He served as Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Gromyko was responsible for many top decisions on Soviet foreign policy until he retired in 1988. In the 1940s Western pundits called him Mr. Nyet or Grim Grom, Gromykos political career started in 1939 with his employment at the Peoples Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. In 1943 Gromyko became the Soviet ambassador to the United States, upon his return to the Soviet Union he became a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and later the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He went on to become the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom in 1952, Gromyko played a direct role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in his role as the Soviet Foreign Minister. Gromyko helped negotiate arms limitations treaties such as the ABM Treaty, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, under Leonid Brezhnevs leadership Gromyko helped build the policy of détente between the US and the USSR. He supported Mikhail Gorbachevs candidacy for General Secretary in 1985, Gromyko lost his office as foreign minister when Gorbachev became General Secretary, and was instead appointed to the largely ceremonial office of head of state. Gromyko retired from life in 1988 and died the following year in Moscow. Gromyko was born to a poor semi-peasant, semi-worker family in the Belarusian village of Staryya Gramyki, Gromykos father, Andrei Matveyevich, worked as a seasonal worker in a local factory. Andrei Matveyevich was not an educated man, having only attended four years of school. He had fought in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Gromykos mother, Olga Yevgenyevna, came from a poor peasant family in the neighbouring city of Zhelezniki. She attended school only for a period of time as. Gromyko grew up near the town of Vetka where most of the inhabitants were devoted Old Believers in the Russian Orthodox Church. Gromykos own village was also religious, but Gromyko started doubting the supernatural at a very early age. His first dialog on the subject was with his grandmother Marfa, then you will understand all this much better. According to Gromyko, Other adults said basically the same thing when talking about religion, Gromykos neighbour at the time, Mikhail Sjeljutov, was a freethinker and introduced Gromyko to new non-religious ideas and told Gromyko that scientists were beginning to doubt the existence of God. From the age of nine, after the Bolshevik revolution, Gromyko started reading atheist propaganda in flyers, at the age of thirteen Gromyko became a member of the Komsomol and held anti-religious speeches in the village with his friends as well as promoting Communist values. The news that Germany had attacked the Russian Empire in August 1914 came without warning to the local population and this was the first time, as Gromyko notes, that he felt love for his country

10.
Georgy Zhukov
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Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov, was a career officer in the Red Army of the Soviet Union who became Chief of General Staff, Deputy Commander-in-Chief, Minister of Defence and a member of the Politburo. During World War II he participated in battles, ultimately commanding the 1st Belorussian Front in the Battle of Berlin. In recognition of Zhukovs role in World War II, he was allowed to participate in signing the German Instrument of Surrender, born into a poverty-stricken peasant family in Strelkovka, Maloyaroslavsky Uyezd, Kaluga Governorate, Zhukov became an apprentice furrier in Moscow. In 1915 the Army of the Russian Empire conscripted him, he served first in the 106th Reserve Cavalry Regiment, during World War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St. George twice, and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer for his bravery in battle. He joined the Bolshevik Party after the 1917 October Revolution, in Party circles his background of poverty became a significant asset. After recovering from a case of typhus he fought in the Russian Civil War over the period 1918 to 1921, serving with the 1st Cavalry Army. He received the decoration of the Order of the Red Banner for his part in subduing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921, at the end of May 1923, Zhukov became a commander of the 39th Cavalry Regiment. In 1924, he entered the Higher School of Cavalry, from which he graduated the next year, in May 1930, Zhukov became commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of the 7th Cavalry Division. In February 1931, he was appointed the Assistant Inspector of Cavalry of the Red Army, in May 1933, Zhukov was appointed a commander in the 4th Cavalry Division. In 1937, he became a commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps, in 1938, he became a deputy commander of the Belorussian Military District for cavalry. This campaign was a war that lasted from 1938 to 1939. These events led to the strategically decisive Battle of Khalkhin Gol, Zhukov requested major reinforcements, and on 20 August 1939, his Soviet Offensive commenced. After a massive artillery barrage, nearly 500 BT-5 and BT-7 tanks advanced, supported by over 500 fighters and bombers and this was the Soviet Air Forces first fighter-bomber operation. The offensive first appeared to be a typical conventional frontal attack, however, two tank brigades were initially held back and then ordered to advance around on both flanks, supported by motorized artillery, infantry, and other tanks. This daring and successful manoeuvre encircled the Japanese 6th Army and captured the enemys vulnerable rear supply areas, by 31 August 1939, the Japanese had been cleared from the disputed border, leaving the Soviets clearly victorious. This campaign had significance beyond the immediate tactical and local outcome, Zhukov demonstrated and tested the techniques later used against the Germans in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. After this campaign, Nomonhan veterans were transferred to units that had not seen action, for his victory, Zhukov was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union. However, the campaign – and especially Zhukovs pioneering use of tanks – remained little known outside of the Soviet Union itself, Zhukov considered Nomonhan invaluable preparation for conducting operations during the Second World War

11.
Arseny Zverev
–
Arseny Grigoryevich Zverev was a Soviet Russian politician, economist and statesman whose career spanned the rules of Stalin and Khrushchev, but culminated during the Stalin years. Zverev was born in a village just outside Moscow. After years in politics, he rose to prominence as a Deputy Commissar of Finance. As Deputy Commissar of Finance he was able to work up, later, Zverev gained a seat in both the Central Committee and the Presidium. During the Great Patriotic War he was responsible for providing funds for the Soviet military machine to fight the Germans, after the war he lost his Ministership, but was again made Minister of Finance late in 1948. He was replaced as Minister of Finance by Vasily Garbuzov in 1960, Zverev then held the office of Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union for four convocations. Zverev was born in Tikhomirovo Klin, Klinsky Uyezd, Moscow Oblast to a working-class family, before attending university, Zverev worked from 1913-1919 at two factories, the first being Vysokovsky manufactory located in Moscow Oblast and Trekhgorny factory in the city of Moscow. By 1919 he had joined both the Russian Communist Party and the Red Army to fight in the Russian Civil War and he became a platoon commander over a cavalry regiment before the demobilization of the army in 1922. In 1922, he became the head of the local Agitation and Propaganda Department and he did however continue his work as an industrial worker for a short-period of time, before leaving for good. In 1927 he became Chairman of the Executive Committee of Klin, the following year he also became the Head of the Financial Department of Bryansk Oblast. From 1931-1932 he attended the Moscow Institute of Finance and Economics, in 1937 he became the First Secretary of the Molotov District Committee of the RCP of Moscow. Zverev graduated and got his degree from the Moscow Institute of Finance in 1949, due to mass arrests perpetrated by the Soviet state in the 1930s, known as the Great Purge, Zverev along with many others were quickly promoted to the top of Soviet bureaucracy. He was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1937–1950, Zverev was given a seat in the Central Committee in 1939. During the Great Patriotic War, Zverev was responsible for providing the funds for the Soviet military for the production of new equipment. During the war, the price for goods also increased, in 1948, from February to December that same year, he was downgraded to Deputy Minister of Finance. He got his old office back in December 1948 and in October 1952 became a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee and he lost his seat following Stalins death in 1953. Following his leave as Minister of Finance, he became Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union on 1-2, in 1961 he became a Professor of the All-Union Correspondence of Financial Institution. Zverev died in Moscow on 27 July 1969 and he was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow

Arseny Zverev
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Arseny Zverev

12.
Lazar Kaganovich
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Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich was a Soviet politician and administrator and one of the main associates of Joseph Stalin. At his death in 1991, he was the last surviving Old Bolshevik, the Soviet Union itself outlived him by a mere five months. Kaganovich was born in 1893 to Jewish parents in the village of Kabany, Radomyshl uyezd, Kiev Governorate, early in his political career, in 1915, Kaganovich became a Communist organizer at a shoe-factory where he worked. Circa 1911 he entered the Bolshevik party, in 1915 Kaganovich was arrested and sent back to Kabany. During March–April 1917 he served as the Chairman of the Tanners Union, in May 1917 he became the leader of the military organization of Bolsheviks in Saratov, and in August 1917, he became the leader of the Polessky Committee of the Bolshevik party in Belarus. During the October Revolution of 1917 he led the revolt in Gomel, in 1918 Kaganovich acted as Commissar of the propaganda department of the Red Army. From May 1918 to August 1919 he was the Chairman of the Ispolkom of the Nizhny Novgorod gubernia, in 1919–1920, he served as governor of the Voronezh gubernia. In May 1922, Stalin became the General Secretary of the Communist Party and this department was responsible for all assignments within the apparatus of the Communist Party. Working there, Kaganovich helped to place Stalins supporters in important jobs within the Communist Party bureaucracy, in this position he became noted for his great work capacity and for his personal loyalty to Stalin. He stated publicly that he would execute any order from Stalin. In 1924 Kaganovich became a member of the Central Committee, from 1925 to 1928, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR. He was given the task of ukrainizatsiya - meaning at that time the building up of Ukrainian communist popular cadres and he also had the duty of implementing collectivization and the policy of economic suppression of the kulaks. He opposed the more moderate policy of Nikolai Bukharin, who argued in favor of the integration of kulaks into socialism. As Secretary, he endorsed Stalins struggle against the so-called Left and Right Oppositions within the Communist Party, in 1934, at the XVII Congress of the Communist Party, Kaganovich chaired the Counting Committee. He falsified voting for positions in the Central Committee, deleting 290 votes opposing the Stalin candidacy and his actions resulted in Stalins being re-elected as the General Secretary instead of Sergey Kirov. By the rules, the candidate receiving fewer opposing votes should become the General Secretary, before Kaganovichs falsification, Stalin received 292 opposing votes and Kirov only three. However, the result saw Stalin with just two opposing votes. In 1930 Kaganovich became a member of the Soviet Politburo and the First Secretary of the Moscow Obkom of the Communist Party and he later headed the Moscow Gorkom of the Communist Party

13.
Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
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Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko was a Soviet statesman from the start to the end of the Cold War. In 1906, Kirilenko was born at Alexeyevka in Belgorod Oblast to a Ukrainian working-class family and he graduated in the 1920s from a local vocational school, and again in the mid-to-late 1930s from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute. He became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1930, after Nikita Khrushchevs forced resignation, Kirilenko became Leonid Brezhnevs chief lieutenant within the Central Committee. His main objective was to ensure Brezhnevs power base and, if possible and he was the first organisational secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from Khrushchevs ouster to the death of Leonid Brezhnev. Kirilenko was responsible for selection and detailed supervision of the economic planning of the CPSU during most of the Brezhnev Era. In 1976, Brezhnev appointed Konstantin Chernenko to be his counterweight in the Central Committee and he became a member of the Political Bureau in 1965. He was forced to resign from politics due to health reasons. When Andropov became General Secretary in 1982, Kirilenko was pushed aside and he died on 12 May 1990 in Moscow. Andrei Kirilenko was born on 8 September 1906 in the village of Alexeyevka, Belgorod Oblast, in the Russian Empire, as a young boy, he worked as an electrician and a locksmith. In 1920, Kirilenko graduated from one of the schools, five years later. In the mid-to-late 1920s, Kirilenko started working for a mining enterprise located in the Voronezh Oblast and he became an active member of Komsomol in 1929 and, two years later, became a member of the All-Union Communist Party. In 1936, he graduated from the Rybinsk Aviation Technology Institute and he started working as a design engineer for the aircraft factory, Zaporizhia Engine Plant. In 1938, Kirilenko became a participant in party politics and was eventually selected to the position of Second Secretary of the Voroshilov District Party Committee in Zaporozhye Oblast. The following year, he was voted in as First Secretary, later that year he was appointed to Second Secretary of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Party Committee of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In this role, Kirilenko made significant contributions to the development of metallurgical and electrical engineering, during the Great Patriotic War, Kirilenko was directly involved with evacuating industry to safe zones. From 1941 to 1943, he was a member of the Military Soviet of the 18th Army of the Southern Front and he contributed by improving discipline among soldiers as well as improving the materiel support for the troops. In 1943, Kirilenko was relocated to Moscow, and during his stay there the production of advanced aircraft increased rapidly, by the end of the war, in 1944, Kirilenko was made First Secretary of the Zaporizhzhya Regional Party. He succeeded Leonid Brezhnev, future Soviet leader, as First Secretary of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Party Committee, Kirilenko was later promoted to Khrushchevs Vice-Chairman of the Bureau of the Central Committee

Andrei Kirilenko (politician)
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Andrei Kirilenko Андрей Кириленко

14.
Frol Kozlov
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Frol Romanovich Kozlov was a Soviet politician, and a Hero of Socialist Labor. Kozlov was born in the village of Loshchinino, Ryazan Province, between 1953 and 1957, Kozlov was the first secretary of the Leningrad Oblast CPSU Committee. In July 1959, he visited the secretive Bohemian Grove encampment in northern California, at the time of his removal, Kozlov had already suffered a stroke, and he died shortly after his removal from office. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Hero of Socialist Labour Four Orders of Lenin Order of the Patriotic War, 2nd class Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice Order of the Red Star Biography of Frol Kozlov

Frol Kozlov
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Frol Kozlov Фрол Козло́в

15.
Ivan Konev
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In 1956, as the Commander of Warsaw Pact forces, Konev led the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution by Soviet armoured divisions. Konev was born on 28 December 1897 into a peasant family near Podosinovets in Vologda Governorate and he had little formal education and worked as a lumberjack. In the spring of 1916, he was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, Konev was sent to the 2nd Heavy Artillery Brigade at Moscow and then graduated from artillery training courses. In 1917, he was sent to the 2nd Separate Heavy Artillery Battalion on the Southwestern Front as a junior sergeant and fought in the Kerensky Offensive. When the Russian Revolution broke out in 1917 he was demobilised and returned home, but in 1919 he joined the Bolshevik party, during the Russian Civil War he served with the Red Army in the Russian Far Eastern Republic. His commander at this time was Kliment Voroshilov, later a colleague of Joseph Stalin. This alliance was the key to Konevs subsequent career, in July 1938 he was appointed commander of the 2nd Red Banner Army. In 1937 he became a Deputy of the Supreme Soviet and in 1939 a candidate member of the Party Central Committee. He commanded the Kalinin Front from October 1941 to August 1942, playing a key role in the fighting around Moscow, for his role in the successful defense of the Soviet capital, Stalin promoted Konev to Colonel-General. In the summer of 1942 Konev led the Kalinin Front and later the Western front in the battle on the Rzhev salient, Konev held Front commands for the rest of the war. He commanded the Soviet Western Front until February 1943, the North-Western Front February–July 1943, in David Glantzs view, Konevs forces generated a major portion of the element of surprise. The result was that the Germans seriously underestimated the strength of the Soviet defences, the commander of 19 Panzer, General G. Schmidt, wrote that We did not assume that there was even one fourth of what we had to encounter. After the victory at Kursk, Konevs armies retook Belgorod, Odessa, Kharkiv, the subsequent Korsun–Shevchenkovsky Offensive led to the Battle of the Korsun–Cherkassy Pocket which took place from 24 January to 16 February 1944. The offensive was part of the Dnieper–Carpathian Offensive, in it, the 1st and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts, commanded, respectively, by Nikolai Vatutin and Konev, trapped German forces of Army Group South in a pocket or cauldron west of the Dnieper river. During weeks of fighting, the two Red Army Fronts tried to eradicate the pocket, the subsequent Korsun battle eliminated the cauldron, according to Milovan Djilas, Konev openly boasted of his killing of thousands of German prisoners of war, The cavalry finally finished them off. We let the Cossacks cut up as long as they wished and they even hacked off the hands of those who raised them to surrender the Marshal recounted with a smile. For his achievements in Ukraine, Konev was promoted by Stalin to Marshal of the Soviet Union in February 1944 and he was one of Stalins favourite generals and one of the few senior commanders whom even Stalin admired for his ruthlessness. During 1944 Konevs armies advanced from Ukraine and Belarus into Poland, in May he participated in an unsuccessful invasion of the Balkans, together with Generals Rodion Malinovsky and Fyodor Tolbukhin

Ivan Konev
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Ivan Stepanovich Konev
Ivan Konev
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Konev at the liberation of Prague by the Red Army in May 1945.

16.
Alexei Kosygin
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Alexei Nikolayevich Kosygin was a Soviet-Russian statesman during the Cold War. Kosygin was born in the city of Saint Petersburg in 1904 to a Russian working-class family and he was conscripted into the labour army during the Russian Civil War, and after the Red Armys demobilisation in 1921, he worked in Siberia as an industrial manager. Kosygin returned to Leningrad in the early 1930s and worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy, during the Great Patriotic War, Kosygin was a member of the State Defence Committee and was tasked with moving Soviet industry out of territories soon to be overrun by the German Army. He served as Minister of Finance for a year before becoming Minister of Light Industry and later, Stalin removed Kosygin from the Politburo one year before his own death in 1953, intentionally weakening Kosygins position within the Soviet hierarchy. After the power struggle triggered by Stalins death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader, on 20 March 1959, Kosygin was appointed to the position of Chairman of the State Planning Committee, a post he would hold for little more than a year. Kosygin next became First Deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers, when Khrushchev was replaced in 1964, Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev became Premier and First Secretary respectively. Kosygin, along with Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, was a member of the newly established collective leadership. This reform, along with his open stance on solving the Prague Spring. More conservative members of the top leadership saw some of Kosygins policies as too radical, by the 1970s, Brezhnev had consolidated enough power to stop any radical reform-minded attempts by Kosygin. In 1980, Kosygin retired from due to bad health. Kosygin was born into a Russian working-class family consisting of his father and mother, Nikolai Ilyich and Matrona Alexandrovna, the family lived in Saint Petersburg. Kosygin was baptised one month after his birth on 7 March and he was conscripted into a labour army on the Bolshevik side during the Russian Civil War. After the Red Armys demobilisation in 1921, Kosygin attended the Leningrad Co-operative Technical School and found work in the system of consumer co-operatives in Novosibirsk, Siberia. When asked why he worked in the sector of the economy, Kosygin replied, quoting a slogan of Vladimir Lenin. Kosygin stayed there for six years and he applied for a membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1927 and returned to Leningrad in 1930 to study at the Leningrad Textile Institute, he graduated in 1935. After finishing his studies, Kosygin was employed as a textile mill director, in 1940 Kosygin became a Deputy chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars, and was appointed in 1943 as Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars of the Russian SFSR. Kosygin worked for the State Defence Committee during the Great Patriotic War, as Deputy Chairman of the Council of Evacuation, his task was to evacuate industry from territories soon to be overrun by the Germans. He broke the Leningrad Blockade by organising the construction of a supply route, Kosygin was a candidate member of the Politburo from 1946 to 1949, and became a full member toward the end of Joseph Stalins rule, he lost his seat in 1952

17.
Vasily Kuznetsov (politician)
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Kuznetsov was born in Sofilovka, Kostroma Governorate. He joined the Communist Party in May 1927 and he took a break from his engineering education when he went to the United States to study metal processing at Carnegie Mellon University from 1931 to 1933. Kuznetsov held a variety of government and Communist Party positions beginning in 1940 and he was Chairman of the Soviet of Nationalities from 12 March 1946 to 12 March 1950. In 1955 he became First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 7 October 1977 he was elected as First Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, a position he held until 18 June 1986. Upon the deaths of Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko and he retired in 1986 and died in Moscow on 5 June 1990. Nikolai A. Zenkovič, Samye zakrytye ljudi i, encyclopedia of biographies, OLMA-Press, Moscow,2002, ISBN 5-94850-035-7, pp. 298–292

Vasily Kuznetsov (politician)
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Vasili Kuznetsov

18.
Dinmukhamed Konayev
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Dinmukhamed Akhmetuly Kunayev was a Kazakh Soviet communist politician. Kunayev, the son of a Kazakh clerk, was born at Verny, now Almaty and he graduated from the Institute of Non-Ferrous and Fine Metallurgy in Moscow in 1936, which enabled him to become a machine operator. By 1939 he had become engineer-in-chief of the Pribalkhashatroi mine, and joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Kunayev was deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Kazakh SSR from 1942 to 1952. In 1947,1951,1955 and 1959 he also was a deputy in the Kazakh SSR Supreme Soviet, Kunayevs rise in Communist Party ranks had been closely tied to that of Leonid Brezhnevs. Khrushchev appointed Panteleymon Ponomarenko as the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, soon, Kunayev and Brezhnev developed a close friendship which lasted until the death of Brezhnev. Brezhnev became the first secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan in 1955, when Brezhnev left Kazakhstan in 1956, I. Iakovlev became the First Secretary of the Kazakh Communist Party, Kunayev had to wait until 1960 to attain the post. In 1962 he was dismissed from his position as he disagreed with Khrushchevs plans to some lands in Southern Kazakhstan into Uzbekistan. Ismail Yusupov, a supporter of the plan, replaced Kunayev and he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan again in 1964 when Khrushchev was ousted and replaced by Brezhnev. He kept his position for more years. He was an member of the Politburo from 1967. During Kunayevs long rule, Kazakhs occupied prominent positions in the bureaucracy, economy, a Brezhnev loyalist, he was removed from office under pressure from Mikhail Gorbachev, who accused him of corruption. On 16 December 1986 the Politburo replaced him with Gennady Kolbin and this provoked street riots in Almaty, which were the first signs of ethnic strife during Gorbachevs tenure. In modern Kazakhstan, this revolt is called Jeltoqsan, meaning December in Kazakh, Kunayev was awarded the Gold Star of Hero of Socialist Labour three times. He spent the last years of his life in charitable activity, establishing the Dinmukhamed Kunayev Foundation, an institute and a street in Almaty have been named after him as well as an avenue in downtown Astana. Kazakhstan, Seven Year Plan for Prosperity by Dinmukhamed Kunayev Commemorative Coin –100 years anniversary of Konayevs birth

19.
Otto Wille Kuusinen
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Kuusinen was born to the family of village tailor Wilhelm Juhonpoika Kuusinen in Laukaa, Finland. Ottos mother died when he was two old, and the family then moved to Jyväskylä. Kuusinen graduated from the Jyväskylä lyceum in May 1900 and entered Helsinki University the same year and his main subjects were philosophy, aesthetics, and art history. Kuusinen was an member of the students union, and during this period he was interested in Fennoman conservatism and Alkioism. Kuusinen graduated as a Candidate of Philosophy in 1902, after toppling the more moderate party chairman J. K. Kari in 1906, Kuusinen came to dominate Finlands Social Democratic Party. He was a member of Finlands Parliament 1908–1913 and the partys chairman 1911–1917 and he was a leader of the January 1918 revolution in Finland that created the short-lived Finnish Socialist Workers Republic, of which he was appointed Peoples Commissar of Education. After the republic was defeated in the Finnish Civil War in 1918, Kuusinen fled to Moscow, Kuusinen continued his work as a prominent leader of the Comintern in Bolshevist Russia, that soon became the Soviet Union. Kuusinen also became a leader in Soviet military intelligence, establishing a network against the Scandinavian countries. In Finland, a moderate faction rehabilitated the Social Democrats under Väinö Tanners leadership. Meanwhile, Kuusinen and other radicals were increasingly seen as responsible for the Civil War, animosity towards socialists in Finland in the decades after the civil war prompted many Finns to emigrate to Russia to build socialism. However, the Soviet Great Purge was a blow to Finns in the Soviet Union. From the very outset of the war, working-class Finns stood behind the government in Helsinki. Finnish national unity against the Soviet invasion was called the spirit of the Winter War. Kuusinen became an official in the Soviet state administration. He was a member of the Politburo, the highest state organ, Kuusinen also continued his work during the administration of Nikita Khrushchev. He was Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union 1957–1964, in 1952 and again in 1957 he was also elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee. Kuusinen was one of the editors of The Fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism, considered to be one of the works on dialectical materialism. In Kremlin politics he was considered a liberal — and from its temporal distance his thinking pointed forward to perestroika, in this he was supported by Khrushchev

20.
Georgy Malenkov
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Georgy Maximilianovich Malenkov was a Soviet politician and Communist Party leader. His family connections with Vladimir Lenin sped his promotion in the party and this brought him into close association with Joseph Stalin, and he was heavily involved in the purges of the 1930s. During World War II, he was given responsibility for the Soviet missile program. His two-year term ended in failure and he was expelled from the Politburo in 1957. In 1961 he was expelled from the party and exiled to Kazakhstan, Malenkov was born at Orenburg in the Russian Empire. His paternal ancestors were from the area of Ohrid, then in the Ottoman Vilayet of Manastir, some of them served as officers in the Russian Imperial Army. His father was a farmer in Orenburg province. Young Malenkov occasionally helped his father to do business selling the harvest and his mother was the daughter of a blacksmith and the granddaughter of an Orthodox priest. He joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1920, Golubtsova and Malenkov never officially registered their union and remained unregistered partners for the rest of their lives. Valeria Golubtsova joined the Soviet Communist Party in 1920 and her personal views were described as anti-semitic by her co-workers. This connection helped both Golubtsova and Malenkov in their communist career, later Golubtsova was the director of the Moscow Energy Institute, a center for nuclear power research in USSR. After the Russian civil war, Malenkov quickly built himself a reputation of a tough communist Bolshevik and he was promoted in the Communist party ranks and was appointed Communist secretary at the military-based Moscow Higher Technical School in the 1920s. Around this time, Malenkov forged a friendship with Vyacheslav Malyshev. In 1924, Stalin noticed Malenkov and assigned him to Orgburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, in 1925, Malenkov worked in the staff of the Organizational Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Malenkov was in charge of keeping records on the members of the Soviet communist party – two million files were made under his supervision during the ten years. In this work Malenkov became closely associated with Stalin and was heavily involved in the treason trials during the purging of the party. In 1938 he was one of the key figures in bringing about the downfall of Yezhov, in 1939 Malenkov became the head of the Communist partys Cadres Directorate, which gave him control over personnel matters of party bureaucracy. During the same year he became a member and a Secretary of the Central Committee

21.
Rodion Malinovsky
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Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky was a Soviet military commander in World War II, Marshal of the Soviet Union, and Defense Minister of the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and 1960s. He contributed to the defeat of Germany at the Battle of Stalingrad. During the post-war era, he made a contribution to the strengthening of the Soviet Union as a military superpower. Born in Odessa, some believe that Malinovskys father was of Karaite descent. After the death of his father, Malinovskys mother left the city for the areas of Ukraine. Her husband, a poverty-stricken Ukrainian peasant, refused to adopt her son, the homeless boy survived by working as a farmhand, and eventually received shelter from his aunts family in Odessa, where he worked as an errand boy in a general store. After the start of World War I in July 1914, Malinovsky, who was only 15 years old at the time, hid on the train heading for the German front. He nevertheless convinced the officers to enlist him as a volunteer. In October 1915, as a reward for repelling a German attack, he received his first military award, the Cross of St. George of the 4th class, soon afterwards, he was badly wounded and spent several months in the hospital. After his recovery, he was sent to France in 1916 as a member of the Western Front Russian Expeditionary Corps, Malinovsky fought in a hotly contested sector of the front near Fort Brion and was promoted to sergeant. He suffered a wound in his left arm, and received a decoration from the French government. Malinovsky fought against the Germans until the end of the war, during this time, he was awarded the French Croix de guerre and promoted to senior NCO. He returned to Odessa in 1919, where he joined the Red Army in the Civil War against the White Army and fought with distinction in Siberia. He remained in the army after the end of the conflict, studying in the school for the junior commanders. In 1926, he became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in 1927, Malinovsky was sent to study at the elite Frunze Military Academy. He graduated in 1930, and during the seven years he rose to the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Cavalry Corps. He participated in planning and directing several main operations, in order to strengthen the Red Army field command, he dispatched some of the top officers from the military academies to the field units. Malinovsky was promoted to General-Major, and took command over the freshly raised 48th Rifle Corps, a week prior to the start of the war, Malinovsky deployed his corps close to the Romanian border

22.
Vasil Mzhavanadze
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Dismissed after a corruption scandal, he was replaced by Eduard Shevardnadze. Mzhavanadze served in the Red Army as a commissar during World War II. After the war, he became deputy commander for political affairs in the Kiev military district in the Ukrainian SSR, Georgia was at this time ruled by supporters of Lavrentiy Beria, who had been the First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party from 1931 to 1938. In July 1953, following the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and the arrest of Beria, Mzhavanadze was promoted to lead the Party in Georgia, replacing Berias protégé Aleksandre Mirtskhulava as First Secretary in September 1953. In an unprecedented display of military presence on the arena, Mzhavanadze was joined in the Georgian Central Committee by the generals Alexi Inauri. When Khrushchev became leader of the USSR in 1957, Mzhavanadze was appointed to become a member of the Soviet Politburo. He became a member in 1966. Georgia prospered during Mzhavanadzes term of office against a background of corruption, Mzhavanadze himself became a symbol of corrupt, inefficient governance. He resigned from his post as First Secretary on September 28,1972 and it has widely been speculated that Shevardnadze had a hand in his bosss downfall, he was certainly the obvious candidate to replace Mzhavanadze. On December 18, Mzhavanadze was sacked from his Politburo position and retired to Georgia in disgrace

Vasil Mzhavanadze
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Vasil Mzhavanadze

23.
Anastas Mikoyan
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Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was an Old Bolshevik and Soviet statesman during the mandates of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. Mikoyan became a convert to the Bolshevik cause. He was a supporter of Stalin during the immediate post-Lenin years. During Stalins rule, Mikoyan held several governmental posts, including that of Minister of Foreign Trade. By the end of Stalins rule, Mikoyan began to favour with him. In October 1952 at the 19th Party Congress Stalin even attacked Mikoyan viciously, when Stalin died in 1953, Mikoyan again took a leading role in policy-making. He backed Khrushchev and his policy, and became First Deputy Premier under Khrushchev. Mikoyans position under Khrushchev made him the second most powerful figure in the Soviet Union at the time, in 1964 Khrushchev was forced to step down in a coup that brought Brezhnev to power. Mikoyan served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, Mikoyan was born to Armenian parents in the village of Sanahin, then a part of the Yelizavetpol Governorate of the Russian Empire in 1895. His father, Hovhannes, worked as a carpenter and his mother was a rug weaver, Mikoyan received his education at the Nersisian School in Tiflis and the Gevorgian Seminary in Echmiadzin. Religion, however, played an insignificant role in his life. Before becoming active in politics Mikoyan had already dabbled in the study of liberalism and socialism, at the age of twenty, he formed a workers soviet in Echmiadzin. In 1915 Mikoyan formally joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, during this time, he is said to have robbed a bank in Tiflis with TNT and had his nose broken in street fighting. After the February 1917 revolution that toppled the Tsarist government, Mikoyan, Mikoyan became a commissar in the newly formed Red Army and continued to fight in Baku against anti-Bolshevik forces. He was wounded in the fighting and was noted for saving the life of fellow Party-member Sergo Ordzhonikidze, known as the Baku 26, all the commissars were executed with the sole exception of Mikoyan, the circumstances of his survival are shrouded in mystery. In February 1919 Mikoyan returned to Baku and resumed his activities there, Mikoyan supported Stalin, whom he had first met in 1919, in the power struggle that followed Lenins death in 1924, he had become a member of the Bolshevik Central Committee in 1923. As Peoples Commissar for External and Internal Trade from 1926, he imported ideas from the West, in 1935 he was elected to the Politburo, and was among one of the first Soviet leaders to pay goodwill trips to the United States in order to boost economic cooperation. Mikoyan spent three months in the United States, where he not only learned more about its food industry but also met and spoke with Henry Ford, Mikoyan spearheaded a project to produce a home cookbook, which would encourage a return to the domestic kitchen

24.
Nikolay Mikhailov
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Nikolay Mihaylov is a Bulgarian footballer who currently plays as a goalkeeper for Turkish side Mersin İdmanyurdu and for the Bulgarian national team. Maria Petrova a prominent world champion in rhythmic gymnastics has been his stepmother since 1998, talented Mihaylov started as a youngster with home country top team Levski Sofia, making his full 90 minutes debut at the age of just 17 years old in the UEFA cup match against Auxerre. He nevertheless wasnt popular with their fans, in June 2007, he almost joined ACF Fiorentina, but instead transferred to Liverpool on a three-year contract, with an option for a further two years. Mihaylov was acquired by Liverpool as a talent, whom might become their first team keeper in the future, as at that time Liverpools first choice keeper was Pepe Reina with Charles Itandje as back up. And by 14 July it became clear that the transfer had hit a problem, as a consequence the Bulgarian U-21 International joined FC Twente on a one-year loan. At FC Twente is the 19-year-old Mihaylov to compete with Sander Boschker, although not playing any matches for the first team, Twente did recognize his talent and in 2008 they extended his loan with a year to August 2009. He stopped the penalty taken by João Moutinho and made a number of key saves to keep the level at 0–0. Mihaylov played the full 90 minutes in the leg and was not at fault for the Portuguese sides last-minute equalizing goal. FC Twente had become impressed with Mihaylov, not only his talent, and after several years of being loaned out to FC Twente, on 5 February 2010 he officially was transferred for a fee of €1. 8m from Liverpool to Twente. He signed a contract for three years with the Dutch club, at the 2010–11 season, he has established himself as the starting goalkeeper for FC Twente. Having played in the Champions League, Mihaylov impressed with great appearances in the competition that season, in the Champions League FC Twente drew to play against his nightmare club Werder Bremen, as it were mentioned by the Bulgarian media. He only conceded one goal in the two played against Werder. Twente was defeated in the quarterfinals by Villareal, after having defeated Rubin Kazan, on 23 December 2011, Mihaylov attended a ceremony in Sofia, where he was honoured with the Bulgarian Footballer of the Year award. The last Bulgarian goalkeeper to have received this distinction is his father Borislav Mihailov, Mihaylov signed for Turkish club Mersin İdmanyurdu on 1 September 2014 on a two-year contract as a free agent. He made his debut in a 3–0 home win over Kemer Tekirovaspor in the Turkish Cup on 29 September and his Süper Lig debut came on 22 November, in a 2–2 away draw against Akhisar Belediyespor. On 27 December, Mihaylov played his second game in a 1–0 loss against Fenerbahçe at Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadium. Mihaylov made his international debut in the 5–1 defeat by Scotland in the Kirin Cup in Japan in May 2006. On 12 August 2009, he earned his second cap, playing the full 90 minutes in a match against Latvia

25.
Vyacheslav Molotov
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Molotov served as Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars from 1930 to 1941, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1939 to 1949 and from 1953 to 1956. He served as First Deputy Premier from 1942 to 1957, when he was dismissed from the Presidium of the Central Committee by Nikita Khrushchev, Molotov retired in 1961 after several years of obscurity. He was aware of the Katyn massacre committed by the Soviet authorities during this period, after World War II, Molotov was involved in negotiations with the Western allies, in which he became noted for his diplomatic skills. He retained his place as a leading Soviet diplomat and politician until March 1949, Molotovs relationship with Stalin deteriorated further, with Stalin criticising Molotov in a speech to the 19th Party Congress. However, after Stalins death in 1953, Molotov was staunchly opposed to Khrushchevs de-Stalinisation policy, Molotov defended Stalins policies and legacy until his death in 1986, and harshly criticised Stalins successors, especially Khrushchev. Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin in the village of Kukarka, Yaransk Uyezd, Vyatka Governorate, contrary to a commonly repeated error, he was not related to the composer Alexander Scriabin. Throughout his teen years, he was described as shy and quiet and he was educated at a secondary school in Kazan, and joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, soon gravitating toward that organisations radical Bolshevik faction, headed by V. I. Skryabin took the pseudonym Molotov, derived from the Russian word молот molot for his political work owing to the names vaguely industrial ring and he was arrested in 1909 and spent two years in exile in Vologda. In 1911 he enrolled at St Petersburg Polytechnic, Molotov joined the editorial staff of a new underground Bolshevik newspaper called Pravda, meeting Joseph Stalin for the first time in association with the project. This first association between the two future Soviet leaders proved to be brief, however, and did not lead to a close political association. Molotov worked as a professional revolutionary for the next several years, writing for the party press. He moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1914 at the time of the outbreak of World War I and it was in Moscow the following year that Molotov was again arrested for his party activity, this time being deported to Irkutsk in eastern Siberia. In 1916 he escaped from his Siberian exile and returned to the city, now called Petrograd by the Tsarist regime. Molotov became a member of the Bolshevik Partys committee in Petrograd in 1916, when the February Revolution occurred in 1917, he was one of the few Bolsheviks of any standing in the capital. Under his direction Pravda took to the left to oppose the Provisional Government formed after the revolution, when Joseph Stalin returned to the capital, he reversed Molotovs line, but when the party leader Lenin arrived, he overruled Stalin. Despite this, Molotov became a protégé of and close adherent to Stalin, Molotov became a member of the Military Revolutionary Committee which planned the October Revolution, which effectively brought the Bolsheviks to power. In 1918, Molotov was sent to Ukraine to take part in the war then breaking out. Since he was not a man, he took no part in the fighting

26.
Kirill Moskalenko
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Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko was a Marshal of the Soviet Union. Moskalenko was born in the village of Grishino, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire and he attended a number of military academies and joined the Red Army in 1920 and fought on various fronts during the Russian Civil War. During the Soviet-Finnish War, he was the commander of artillery for the 51st Rifle Division, when Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941, Moskalenko was the commander of an anti-tank brigade. Between June,1941, and March,1942, Moskalenko first held command of the 1st Anti-Tank Brigade, 15th Rifle Corps, 6th Army and he was the commander of the newly reformed 38th Army from March to July,1942. Moskalenko led his troops during the winter counteroffensive and during the Battle of Kursk, because of his contributions to a large number of key battles, such as Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk, Moskalenko was given the rank of Hero of the Soviet Union. From October 1943 until the end of the war, Moskalenko was the commander of the 38th Army and he led his troops as they helped drive the Germans from the Ukraine, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. After the war, Moskalenko served in various capacities in the Moscow Military District, while Zhukov could not carry a gun into the Kremlin, Moskalenko sneaked into the Kremlin with a gun to arrest Beria. During the next six months, he and Rudenko investigated the Beria Case, in December,1953, the Soviet Supreme Court found Beria guilty after a five-day proceeding. On December 23, Beria was shot, another version states that Beria was shot by machine gun during the military assault on his residential compound in Moscow. As a result of operation, on March 11,1955, Moskalenko. Moskalenko remained in the Moscow Military District until 1960, when he was made Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Rocket Forces, in 1962, he was made an Inspector General of the Ministry of Defense. He died on June 17,1985 and his body was buried in Novodevichy Cemetery. dk

Kirill Moskalenko
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Kirill Semyonovich Moskalenko.

27.
Imam Mustafayev
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Imam Dashdemir oglu Mustafayev was an Azerbaijani politician and First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR. Son of a peasant, he was born in a village of the Qakh region in Azerbaijan. In 1928 he graduated from the Zaqatala Agricultural Technical School and in 1932 - the Institute of Agriculture of Azerbaijan, since then he has conducted scientific research works. Mustafayev has been awarded with the Order of Labor Glory Red Banner, in 1940, he joined the Azerbaijan Communist Party and received many important encharges. In 1954, he was elected the First Secretary of Azerbaijan Communist Party, as a result of this step which was not agreed upon with Moscow Azerbaijani acquired increasingly an important status in the entire country. This was the reason behind his premature removal from power. After being removed from office, he worked as the Director of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences

28.
Nuritdin Mukhitdinov
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Nuritdin Mukhitdinov was a Soviet politician. He was also the Soviet ambassador to Syria between 1968 and 1977, Mukhitdinov was born in the village Allan near Tashkent in a family of Uzbek farmers. After finishing an Uzbek-language school, in 1934 he was sent to the University of Trade in Moscow and he graduated in 1938 and worked in the Communist Party system, first at a factory in Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and then with the Soviet Army in Ukraine. During World War II he participated in combat and was wounded at the Battle of Stalingrad and he was demobilized in 1946 to assume various party posts in Uzbekistan. In 1948 he became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and his party career became volatile in the 1950s. Later in the year, after the death of Stalin. His career rose after the removal of Beria in December 1953, Mukhitdinov was reinstated as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Uzbekistan, and was First Secretary of the Uzbek Central Committee of the Communist Party from 1955 to 1957. He opposed the attempted demotion of Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, and in return Khrushchev recommended him to the Presidium, for example, Mukhitdinov opposed the proposal by Khrushchev to remove the remains of Stalin from the Mausoleum. As a consequence, in 1961 he was demoted from the Presidium and was on the verge of expulsion from the Central Committee and he retained his international activities and in 1968-1977 served as the ambassador to Syria, eventually receiving the Order of Friendship. After retirement in 1985 he returned to native Tashkent, where he worked as a government adviser, wrote several books, and died in 2008

29.
Nikolai Patolichev
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Nikolai Semyonovich Patolichev was Minister of Foreign Trade of the USSR from 1958 to 1985. Prior to that, he was the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia from 1950 to 1956, after working in factories, he became a Komsomol activist. From an early age, Joseph Stalin had taken an interest in Patolichev, nikolais father, Semyon Patolichev, had been a good friend of Stalins before he was killed in the Polish-Soviet War in 1920. Nikolai Patolichev joined the Communist Party in 1928 in the city of Dzerzhinsk as a Komsomol, Patolichev was promoted to first secretary of the Yaroslavl Oblast Party Committee in January 1939. The following March, at the 18th Party Congress, he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In February 1941, at the 18th All-Union Conference of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, on 28 December 1941, Patolichev was relieved from duties in Yaroslavl and transferred to Chelyabinsk. Chelyabinsk, known as Tankograd during the Great Patriotic War, was an industrial center that contributed greatly to the Soviet war effort against Nazi Germany. In February 1946 Patolichev was recalled to Moscow to head the Organization and Instruction Department of the Central Committee and his role was expanded on 6 May 1946, when he was made a secretary of the Central Committee, taking the place of Georgy Malenkov, who was temporarily demoted. In August, Patolichev became chief of the reorganized Organizational-Instructional department, in the fall of 1946, he became first deputy chairman of the Council for Collective Farm Affairs under his mentor, chairman Andrey Andreyevich Andreyev. His responsibilities in Moscow now included the incongruously combined affairs of agriculture and cadres, on 3 March 1947, Patolichev and Lazar Kaganovich were sent by Stalin to Ukraine to help Nikita Khrushchev, who had fallen into disfavor. Kaganovich took over Khrushchevs post of First Secretary, with Patolichev becoming Central Committee secretary for agriculture, the two did not work well together, and Patolichev requested that Stalin reassign him. He was removed from his posts on the Orgburo and Secretariat on 24 May 1947, Patolichev next became first secretary of the Rostov Oblast and City Party Committees, serving from August 1947 to June 1950. According to historian Evan Mawdsley, Patolichev. recovered from this exile in 1950, in one of the intervals of a Supreme Soviet meeting Stalin called him in and asked him if he wanted to be first secretary of the Belorussian SSR, Patolichev agreed. In the late Stalin years it was not unusual to appoint ethnic Russians to leading posts in the non-Russian republics, Patolichev succeeded Nikolai Gusarov as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Byelorussia on 31 May 1950. In October 1952, Patolichev delivered one of the speeches at the 19th Party Congress and was re-elected to the Central Committee as a full member. At the Central Committee plenum that followed the 19th Congress, he was elected candidate member of the enlarged Presidium of the Central Committee. On 5 March 1953, Patolichev was removed from the Central Committee Presidium in the reorganization that followed Stalins death, at Lavrenty Berias instigation, in June 1953 the Presidium attempted to remove Patolichev as first secretary in Byelorussia and replace him with an ethnic Belarusian, Mikhail Zimyanin. At the contentious plenum of the Byelorussian Central Committee that followed, the delegates rallied behind Patolichev and rejected the Presidiums decree and he was later replaced as first secretary in Byelorussia by ethnic Belarusian Kirill Mazurov, and in July 1956 became first deputy minister of Foreign Affairs

30.
Mikhail Pervukhin
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Mikhail Georgievich Pervukhin was a Soviet official during the Stalin Era, Khrushchev Era and the early Brezhnev Era. He served as a First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, literally First Vice-Premier of the Soviet Union and he was born on 14 October 1904 in the village of Yuryuzansky Zavod, Ufa governorate, Russian Empire to a Russian working-class family. Pervukhin became a member of the Russian Communist Party in 1919, in August to September 1919 Pervukhin was a member of the Zlatoust city commission on the nationalisation of property belonging to the bourgeoisie. He began working for the Zlatoust newspaper Borba in October 1919 and he fought alongside the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War in the South Urals. From October to November 1920 Pervukhin was a member of the Bolshevik squad quelling the uprising in Chrysostom. From January 1921 to mid-autumn Pervukhin worked as the Executive Secretary of the Proletarian Thought and he was a member of the Bureau of the Zlatoust Komsomol District Committee, and later became the head of its Department for Political Education in April 1922. Later that year he became the Zlatoust Komsomol District Committees Deputy Secretary, the Metal Workers Union of the Zlatoust District Committee ordered Pervukhin to Moscow in the late summer of 1922 to study. He graduated in 1929 from the Electrical Department of the Moscow Institute of the National Economy with a degree in electrical engineering, following his graduation, Pervukhin started work at Mosenergo, the Moscow electric power company. In May 1936 he became the Director of the Kashirskaya Power Plant, from June to September 1937, Pervukhin worked as Mosenergos Chief Engineer, and later that year became its acting head. During the Great Purge Pervukhin was promoted to Deputy Head of the Moscow Electrical Power Administration Bureau, and then its head. From 1940 to 1942, during World War II, Pervukhin served as a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Peoples Commissars, Pervukhin, alongside Boris Vannikov, was Vyacheslav Molotovs deputy on the State Defense Committees commission responsible for the development of the Soviet atomic bomb since 1943. Along with Molotov, Pervukhin was in charge of the uranium project. When Joseph Stalin signed the State Defense Committee Resolution No,9887, he established a Special Committee with emergency powers. The Committees main duty was to oversee the work of those who contributed to the development of the atomic bomb, Stalin personally picked the members of the committee, Pervukhin was one of nine members. Pervukhin was the Deputy Chairman under Vannikovs Chairmanship of the First Main Directorate of the Council of Peoples Commissars and he also served as Chairman of the State Commission on the RDS-1 testing at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. In 1950 Pervuhkin was once again appointed Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers and in 1952, at the 19th Party Congress, he was elected a member of the Presidium, the renamed Politburo. At the 35th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1952, Pervukhin delivered the speech at the Moscow Kremlin commemoration. If Stalin was absent or could not carry out his duty as Chairman of the Council of Ministers, government meetings would be chaired, in turn by Pervukhin, Lavrentiy Beria, or Maksim Saburov

Mikhail Pervukhin
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Mikhail Pervukhin Михаи́л Перву́хин

31.
Nikolai Podgorny
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Nikolai Viktorovich Podgorny was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine from 1957 to 1963 and he was replaced as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in 1977 by General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. That same year he lost his seat in the Political Bureau and was forced to resign from active politics, Podgorny was born in the city of Karlovka in 1903 to a Ukrainian working-class family. He graduated in from a workers school in 1926. He became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1930, like his friend and ally Andrei Kirilenko, Podgorny climbed up the Soviet hierarchy through the industrial ladder. By 1953 he had become Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, after Anastas Mikoyans resignation, Podgorny was voted into office as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. After Premier Alexei Kosygins fall from favour Podgorny became the second most powerful figure in the Soviet Union until his removal as head of state in 1977, Podgorny was born on 18 February 1903 in Karlovka, Russian Empire, to a Ukrainian working-class family. Podgorny started work at the age of 17 as a student at the workshops in Karlovka. After the Russian Revolution Podgorny became one of the founders of the Karlovka Komsomol and he served as a Secretary of the Komsomol from 1921 to 1923. In 1926 Podgorny graduated from a workers school, and then from the Kiev Technological Institute of Food Industry in 1931. In 1930, Podgorny became a member of the All-Union Communist Party, following his graduation Podgorny started working in the sugar industry. He was promoted to deputy chief engineer of Vinnytsia in 1937 and was promoted in 1939 as the engineer of the Kamenetz-Podolsk Oblast sugar trusts. By the end of 1939 Podgorny had become Deputy Peoples Commissar for Food Industry of the Ukrainian SSR, the next year Podgorny was appointed Deputy Peoples Commissar for Food Industry of the Soviet Union. Podgorny became the Director of the Moscow Technological Institute of Food Industry in 1942, after the liberation of Ukraine from the hands of Nazi Germany, Podgorny reestablished Soviet control over Ukraine on the orders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Soviet Government. In April 1950 he was made First Secretary of the Kharkiv Regional Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in 1953 Podgorny was elevated to Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPU. From 1957 to 1963 he was First Secretary of the CC of the CPU, in this role, Podgorny worked on reorganising and modernising the Ukrainian economy, which had been destroyed during the war years. He worked to increase the rate of industrial and agricultural production and he paid particular attention to improving party organisation and educating new cadres. In 1960 Podgorny became a member of the Politburo and by 1963 had risen to prominence within the Soviet hierarchy as a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Nikolai Podgorny
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Podgorny in 1963
Nikolai Podgorny
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Podgorny (left, bottom) conferring the Order of Lenin upon the Komsomol; Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov are also present

32.
Panteleimon Ponomarenko
–
Panteleimon Kondratevich Ponomarenko was a general in the Red Army before becoming a Soviet administrator in Belarus and then Kazakhstan. He was born in Krasnodar Krai, Russia, from 1938 to 1947, Ponomarenko was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Belorussia, and from 1944 to 1948, also the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Byelorussia. During World War II, he led Communist partisan units within Nazi-occupied Belarus and he clashed with the Polish underground and gave orders for his troops to disarm them and execute the officers. In this aspect the forces under Ponomarenkos command initiated a collaboration with the Nazi occupation forces informing on members of the Polish underground. From 16 October 1952 until 6 March 1953, Ponomarenko was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and he was made First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Kazakh SSR in 1954 before becoming the Soviet ambassador to Poland between 1955 and 1957. From 26 October 1957 to 22 April 1959 Ponomarenko was the Soviet ambassador to India and Nepal and he was deported from the Netherlands by the Dutch government after an incident with scientist Aleksei Golub and his wife. They asked political asylum, and Ponomarenko had a fist fight with Dutch police officers trying to return Golubs to the Soviet government offices. Ponomarenko also taught diplomacy and assisted in the creation of the National Jazz Orchestra in Minsk and this article is based in part on material from the Polish Wikipedia

Panteleimon Ponomarenko
–
Panteleimon Ponomarenko

33.
Maksim Saburov
–
Maksim Zakharovich Saburov was a Soviet engineer, economist and politician, three-time Chairman of Gosplan and later First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union. He was involved in the Anti-Party Groups attempt to displace Nikita Khrushchev in 1957, Saburov was born in 1900 in the town of Druzhkivka in what is now Ukraine. He joined the Communist Party in 1920, serving in a detachment with the aim of suppressing resistance to the Communist regime and he attended the Sverdlov Communist University between 1923 and 1926, then studied to become an engineer at the Bauman Moscow State Technical University in Moscow. Between 1921 and 1926, Saburov was Secretary of the Bachmut Komsomol Committee, between 1926 and 1928, Saburov was a propagandist working in the Donets region. After five years of studying at the Bauman Institute, Saburov became head of the bureau of a factory in Moscow in 1933. Subsequently he was head of the division of the Stalin Novokramatorsk Machine Plant until 1937. Saburov advanced rapidly during the Great Purge, becoming a minister in the Narkomat for Heavy Machines in 1937, in 1947, Saburov became a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and in 1952 he became a member of the Central Committee of the CPSU. He served in the Presidium of this body until 1957, Saburov became full Chairman of Gosplan in 1941. Documents from the Russian State Economic Archives note that his responsibilities prior to assuming the chairmanship included personnel matters and he had a brief period in power here until 1942, when he was superseded by his predecessor Nikolai Voznesensky. He was relegated to a Deputy Chairman of Gosplan in 1946, in 1947 he was made a Deputy Chairman of Council of Ministers. In 1949 Saburov was made Chairman of Gosplan once again, in this function he helped to formulate and then presided over the Fifth Five-Year Plan. Saburov was partly responsible for the reconstruction of the Soviet Union after the Second World War, milk production was lower by 100,000 tons, meat production was only 12,000 tons higher. Under this short period of time, Saburov was Minister of Machinery, in 1954 Saburov criticized the high rate of absenteeism in the Soviet Union, saying that labor productivity was insufficient and further tightening of labor discipline was required. He was responsible for helping to plan the Sixth Five-Year Plan, however, in 1956 - after he had moved from being Chairman of Gosplan - Saburov, with the other planners, was criticized for having been unrealistic in planning. Saburov was removed as Chairman in 1955, becoming First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Saburov became First Deputy Premier in 1955. S. in the foreseeable future. Saburov was also responsible for using hard figures rather than percentages in the Five-Year Plan for the first time, in 1957, a failed attempt to depose Khrushchev was run by Malenkov, Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov, known as the Anti-Party Group. Saburov, being a friend of Malenkov, was implicated in the coup attempt, Malenkov, in this period was condemned as loathsome, thus also bringing Saburov into the purge. Saburov worked as Deputy Chairman of Comecon for a period of time afterwards, before moving to a factory in Syzran

Maksim Saburov
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Maksim Saburov Максим Сабуров

34.
Vasily Sokolovsky
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Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky was a Soviet military commander. Sokolovsky was born into a peasant family in Kozliki, a town in the province of Grodno. He worked as a teacher in a school, where he took part in a number of protests. He joined the Red Army in February 1918 and he began his formal military schooling in 1919, but was frequently called up by the Red Army and forced to leave his schoolwork. He graduated in 1921 and was made the chief of staff of a division stationed in Turkmenistan and he was wounded during a battle near Samarkand and subsequently decorated for bravery. He remained in position until February 1943, when he became the commander of Western Front. He led this front through the Kursk battles and until April 1944 and he remained in this position until the end of the war. As the chief of staff of 1st Ukrainian, Sokolovsky helped plan and execute the Berlin operation, after the World War II, Sokolovsky was the deputy commander in chief of Soviet forces in East Germany until July 3,1946. His walking out of a meeting of the Allied Control Council on 20 March 1948 as the Soviet representative on that body effectively immobilized it from that date. In 1949 he was made the Deputy Minister of Defense, a position he held until 1952, in 1960, Sokolovsky was made the Inspector-General of the Ministry of Defense. He retained this position until his death on May 10,1968, Sokolovsky became widely known in the West with the publication in 1962 of Military Strategy, a book that contained rare detail on Soviet thinking about war, particularly nuclear war. Sokolovsky was a key member of the Soviet war command during World War II and known as an excellent planner and he was particularly well trusted by Marshal Georgy Zhukov. The urn containing Sokolovsky’s ashes is buried in the Kremlin, Sokolovsky was a prominent figure in William T. Vollmanns 2005 National Book Award winning novel, Europe Central

35.
Mikhail Suslov
–
Mikhail Andreyevich Suslov was a Soviet statesman during the Cold War. He served as Second Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1965, Suslov was responsible for party democracy and the power separation within the Communist Party. His hardline attitude toward change made him one of the foremost anti-reformist Soviet leaders, born in rural Russia in 1902, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1921 and studied economics for much of the 1920s. He left his job as a teacher in 1931 to pursue politics full-time, Suslov impressed the Soviet leadership to such an extent in the pre-Eastern Front Soviet Union that he was made First Secretary of Stavropol Krai administrative area. During the war, Suslov headed the local Stavropol guerrilla movement and he became a member of the Organisational Bureau of the Central Committee in 1946 and, four years later, was elected to the Presidium of the All-Union Communist Party. Suslov lost much of the recognition and influence he had earned following the reshuffle of the Soviet leadership after Stalins death, however, by the late 1950s, Suslov had risen to become the leader of the hardline opposition to Nikita Khrushchevs revisionist leadership. After Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Suslov supported the establishment of a collective leadership and he also supported inner-party democracy and opposed the reestablishment of the one-man rule as seen during the Stalin and Khrushchev Eras. During the Brezhnev Era, Suslov was considered to be the Partys Chief Ideologue and his death on 25 January 1982 is viewed as starting the battle to succeed Leonid Brezhnev in the post of General Secretary. Suslov was born in Shakhovskoye, a locality in Pavlovsky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast. Suslov began work in the local Komsomol organisation in Saratov in 1918, after working in the Komsomol for nearly three years, Suslov became a member of the All-Union Communist Party in 1921. After graduating from the rabfak, he studied economics at the Plekhanov Institute of National Economy between 1924–1928, in 1931 he abandoned teaching in favour of the party apparatus. He became an inspector on the Communist Partys Party Control Commission and on the Peoples Commissariat of the Workers and his main task there was to adjudicate on large numbers of personal cases, breaches of discipline, and appeals against expulsion from the party. In 1933 and 1934 Suslov directed a commission charged with purging the party in the Ural, the purge was organised by Lazar Kaganovich, then Chairman of the Soviet Control Commission. On the orders of Joseph Stalin, Suslov purged the city of Rostov in 1938, Suslov was made First Secretary of the Stavropol Krais Communist Party in 1939. On the Eastern Front in World War II, Suslov was a member of the Military Soviet of the Northern Group of Forces, according to Soviet historiography, Suslovs years as a guerrilla fighter were highly successful, however, testimonies from participants differ from the official account. These participants claim that there were a number of problems which reduced their effectiveness on the battlefield. During the war, Suslov spent much of his time mobilising workers to fight against the German invaders, the guerrilla movement he led was operated by the regional party cells. During the liberation of the Northern Caucasus, Suslov maintained close contact with the Red Army, during the war, Suslov supervised the deportations of Chechens and other Muslim minorities from the Caucasus

Mikhail Suslov
–
Mikhail Suslov Михаил Суслов

36.
Dmitriy Ustinov
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Dmitriy Feodorovich Ustinov was Minister of Defence of the Soviet Union from 1976 until his death. Dimitry Feodorovich Ustinov was born in a family in Samara. During the civil war, when hunger became intolerable, his father went to Samarkand. Shortly after that, in 1922, his father died, in 1923, he and his mother, Yevrosinya Martinovna, moved to the city of Makarev where he worked as a fitter in a paper mill. Shortly after that, in 1925, his mother died, Ustinov joined the communist party in 1927. In 1929, he started training at the Faculty of Mechanics in the Polytechnic Institute of Ivanovo-Voznesensk, afterward, Ustinov was transferred to the Moscow Bauman Higher Technical School. Then, in March 1932, he entered the Institute of Military Mechanical Engineering in Leningrad from where he graduated in 1934, afterward, he worked as a construction engineer at the Leningrad artillery Marine Research Institute. In 1937, he was transferred to the Bolshevik Arms Factory as an engineer and he later became the director of the Factory. At the time of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941, from this position, he supervised the massive evacuation of the defence industry from the besieged city of Leningrad to east of the Ural Mountains. Over 80 military industries were evacuated that together employed over six hundred workers, technicians. Stalin later rewarded Ustinov, whom he called the Red-head, with the Soviet Unions highest civilian honour, Hero of Socialist Labour. After the war was over, Ustinov played a role in requisitioning the German missile programme, developed during World War II, as an impetus to the Soviet missile. In 1952, Ustinov became a member of the Central Committee, in 1957, he was appointed as a Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union and became chairman of the Military-Industrial Commission. Leonid Brezhnev took power after the ousting of Khrushchev, and Ustinov returned to the defense industry, in 1965, Brezhnev made Ustinov a candidate member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee with oversight of the military, the defense industry, and certain security organs. He was also placed in charge of developing the Soviet Unions strategic bomber force, Ustinov was known in the defense industry as Uncle Mitya. He was also Chelomeis stolid personal adversary and he issued a directive, in February 1970, that ordered the Chelomei design bureau to combine its Almaz space station with Sergei Korolyovs design bureau, headed by Vasili Mishin. This order was designed as an impetus towards the development of the Salyut space station, Ustinov gained power in the bureaucracy as he rose in the defense industry. In 1976, after Andrei Grechko died on April 26, Ustinov became the Defense Minister and was promoted to General of the Army on April 29

37.
Yekaterina Furtseva
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Furtseva was born in Vyshny Volochyok. Until the 1940s, she worked as a weaver at one of Moscows textile factories. She had been a party worker in Kursk and the Crimea. Furtsevas party career started under Joseph Stalin, gradually, she became active in Komsomol affairs and rose to the position of Secretary of the Moscow City Council in 1950. She gave a speech at the 19th Congress of the CPSU in 1952, the last party congress of the Stalin era, under Nikita Khrushchev, who sympathized with her, Furtseva was the first secretary of Moscow Committee of the CPSU from 1954 to 1957. In 1952, Furtseva attacked the leading filmstar, Boris Babochkin and this time Furtseva saw the actor starring in a stageplay, and was enraged by Babochkins satirical portrayal of the Soviet communist leadership. Her angry article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda called for censorship of Babochkin, then Furtseva personally ordered that all film studios and drama companies of the USSR should refuse Babochkin any jobs, keeping him unemployed. In 1956 she was appointed a Secretary of the Central Committee and was elected a member of Politburo. She became the first woman to join the Politburo the next year, during that time she fell in love with Nikolay Firyubin, the Soviet ambassador in Yugoslavia. Furtseva scandalized the Soviet elite by her trips abroad in order to meet her lover. As he married her and rose to become the Deputy Foreign Minister, they settled in Moscow, during the following 14 years, remembered as the Age of Furtseva, she exerted immense influence on Soviet culture, both repressive and beneficent. As she became interested in manipulating theatre and cinema, many remarkable actors and directors tried to secure her friendship in order to further their own careers. According to the most intimate of her friends, she became addicted to alcohol. On 19 June 1974, Pravda revealed that she had failed to be re-elected to the Supreme Soviet, two months previous she had been disciplined by the Party for extravagance and fined 40,000 rubles. She died in Moscow a few later, officially of heart failure. Yet there were rumors that she was implicated in illegal dealings and, wishing to preclude the impending scandal and disgrace. Furtseva is buried at the Novodevichye Cemetery

Yekaterina Furtseva
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Yekaterina Furtseva in 1964

38.
Nikita Khrushchev
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Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev was a politician who led the Soviet Union during part of the Cold War. He served as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964, Khrushchevs party colleagues removed him from power in 1964, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in the village of Kalinovka in 1894, close to the border between Russia and Ukraine. He was employed as a metalworker in his youth, and during the Russian Civil War was a political commissar, with the help of Lazar Kaganovich, he worked his way up the Soviet hierarchy. He supported Joseph Stalins purges, and approved thousands of arrests, in 1938, Stalin sent him to govern Ukraine, and he continued the purges there. During what was known in the Soviet Union as the Great Patriotic War, Khrushchev was again a commissar, Khrushchev was present at the bloody defense of Stalingrad, a fact he took great pride in throughout his life. After the war, he returned to Ukraine before being recalled to Moscow as one of Stalins close advisers, in the power struggle triggered by Stalins death in 1953, Khrushchev, after several years, emerged victorious. On 25 February 1956, at the 20th Party Congress, he delivered the Secret Speech, denouncing Stalins purges and his domestic policies, aimed at bettering the lives of ordinary citizens, were often ineffective, especially in agriculture. Hoping eventually to rely on missiles for defense, Khrushchev ordered major cuts in conventional forces. Despite the cuts, Khrushchevs rule saw the most tense years of the Cold War, flaws in Khrushchevs policies eroded his popularity and emboldened potential opponents, who quietly rose in strength and deposed the premier in October 1964. However, he did not suffer the fate of previous losers of Soviet power struggles, and was pensioned off with an apartment in Moscow. His lengthy memoirs were smuggled to the West and published in part in 1970, Khrushchev died in 1971 of heart disease. Khrushchev was born on 15 April 1894, in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russias Kursk Oblast and his parents, Sergei Khrushchev and Ksenia Khrushcheva, were poor peasants of Russian origin, and had a daughter two years Nikitas junior, Irina. Sergei Khrushchev was employed in a number of positions in the Donbas area of far eastern Ukraine, working as a railwayman, as a miner, and laboring in a brick factory. Wages were much higher in the Donbas than in the Kursk region, Kalinovka was a peasant village, Khrushchevs teacher, Lydia Shevchenko, later stated that she had never seen a village as poor as Kalinovka had been. Nikita worked as a herdsboy from an early age and he was schooled for a total of four years, part in the village parochial school and part under Shevchenkos tutelage in Kalinovkas state school. She urged Nikita to seek education, but family finances did not permit this. In 1908, Sergei Khrushchev moved to the Donbas city of Yuzovka, fourteen-year-old Nikita followed later that year, while Ksenia Khrushcheva and her daughter came after

39.
Nikolai Shvernik
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Nikolay Mikhailovich Shvernik was a Soviet politician and Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from March 19,1946 until March 15,1953. Though the titular Soviet head of state, Shvernik had, in fact, Shvernik was born in St. Petersburg and joined the Bolsheviks in 1905. In 1924 he became a Peoples Commissar in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, in 1927 he was demoted and sent to the Urals to head the local party organization. Stalin found him a loyal supporter of his policy of rapid industrialisation and he resumed his rise in the party becoming a member of the Orgburo and the party Secretariat. He also served as first secretary of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions from July 1930 to March 1944, as such, Shvernik presided over the 1931 Menshevik Trial, in which fourteen Russian economists came up for trial on charges of treason. During the Second World War Shvernik was responsible for evacuating Soviet industry away from the advancing Wehrmacht and he was Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR from 1943 to 1946. In 1946 he became Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and he only became a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee in 1952 but was demoted in 1953 when the body was reduced in size. Following the death of Stalin, Shvernik was removed as president of the USSR. Shvernik returned to his work as the chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in 1957, Shvernik again became a full member of the Presidium and remained on the body until he retired in 1966

Nikolai Shvernik
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Nikolay Shvernik Николай Шверник

40.
Alexander Shelepin
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Alexander Nikolayevich Shelepin was a Soviet state security officer and party statesman. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Shelepin was born in Voronezh, according to one source the son of a railway official. He became an official of the Communist Youth League in 1943, and at the head of the successor organisation. He accompanied Nikita Khrushchev on the Soviet leaders trip to the Peoples Republic of China in 1954, Shelepin then became the head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, which had been reorganised and reformed as the KGB after the death of Soviet leader Stalin. Nikita Khrushchev appointed Shelepin in part because of several major KGB defections in the 1950s during the tenure of Ivan Serov as head of the KGB, Shelepin attempted to return state security to its position of importance during the Stalinist era. He demoted or fired many KGB officers, replacing them with officials from Communist Party organisations, during the 1950s, Aleksandr Shelepin proposed and carried out a destruction of many documents related to the Katyn massacre to minimise the chance that the truth would be revealed. Cuba strongly supported a policy of military support for African national liberation movements with Che Guevara, in co-operation with Ben Bella of Algeria. Shelepin became a First Deputy Prime Minister in 1962 and he was a principal player in the coup against Khrushchev in October 1964, obviously influencing the KGB to support the conspirators. Shelepin probably expected to become First Secretary and de facto head of government when Khrushchev was overthrown, instead, Shelepins reward was to be made a full member of the ruling Politburo in November 1964—by a significant margin its youngest member. But he still held ambitions of becoming the first among equals and his colleagues on the Politburo watched him carefully, seeking to halt his ambitions. He survived in that body until 1975, when he fell from power, being successively demoted to a number of lower positions

Alexander Shelepin
–
Alexander Shelepin Алекса́ндр Шеле́пин

41.
Dmitri Shepilov
–
Dmitri Trofimovich Shepilov was a Soviet politician and Minister of Foreign Affairs who joined the abortive plot to oust Nikita Khrushchev from power in 1957. Dmitri Shepilov was born in Askhabad in the Transcaspian Oblast of the Russian Empire in a family of Russian ethnicity. He graduated from the Law School of the Moscow State University in 1926 and was sent to work in Yakutsk, in 1928–1929 Shepilov worked as an assistant regional prosecutor in Smolensk. In 1931–1933 Shepilov studied at the Institute of Red Professors in Moscow while simultaneously working as the secretary of the magazine On the Agrarian Front. After graduating in 1933, Shepilov was made head of the department of a sovkhoz. In 1935 he was made Deputy Chief of the Sector of Agricultural Science of the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, in 1937 Shepilov became a Doctor of Science and was made the Scientific Secretary of the Institute of Economics of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. He also taught economics in Moscows colleges between 1937 and 1941, in 1942–1943 he was the political commissar of the 23rd Guard Army and in 1944–1946 of the 4th Guard Army, ending the war with the rank of Major General. Between May 1945 and February 1946, Shepilov was one of the top Soviet officials in Vienna during the stages of the Soviet occupation of eastern parts of Austria. In February 1946, Shepilov was appointed deputy head of the Propaganda, on 2 August 1946 he became the head of the propaganda department of the main Communist Party daily Pravda. Shepilov was appointed deputy chief of the Department on 18 September 1947, since the new department head, Mikhail Suslov, had other responsibilities, Shepilov had almost complete control of the Departments day-to-day operations. 1 December 1947 appointment of Yuri Zhdanov, Andrei Zhdanovs son, on 1 July 1948, Zhdanovs main rival, Georgy Malenkov, took over at the Communist Party Secretariat while Zhdanov was sent on a two-month vacation, where he died. Shepilov, however, not only survived this change at the top and he also survived the next round of the intra-Party struggle associated with the removal and later execution of the Politburo member Nikolai Voznesensky. In 1952 Stalin put Shepilov in charge of writing a new Soviet economics textbook based on Stalins recently published treatise Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, on 18 November 1952, after the 19th Communist Party Congress, Shepilov was appointed editor-in-chief of Pravda. He was made a Corresponding Member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences the same year and he retained his Pravda post and became a senior Communist theoretician, contributing to Khrushchevs famous secret speech denouncing Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in February 1956. Even though his field was Communist ideology, Shepilov soon began to branch out into foreign policy, in late May 1955 he accompanied Khrushchev and the new Soviet prime minister Nikolai Bulganin to Yugoslavia to end the confrontation between the two countries which had begun in 1947–1948. According to Veljko Mićunović, then a member of the Yugoslav leadership, At a lunch with Tito in 1955, Khrushchev several times asked Shepilov to confirm an incident he had just described. Shepilov would remove the table napkin, Micunovic recalled, stand up from the table, I found such behavior on Shepilovs part most unusual, as I did Khrushchevs in tolerating it. It also signaled the Soviet Unions new found flexibility in dealing with non-Communist Third World countries in marked contrast to the intransigence of Stalins years, on 27 February 1956, after the Soviet Communist Partys 20th Congress, Shepilov was made a candidate member of the Central Committees Presidium

Dmitri Shepilov
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Dmitri Shepilov in 1955

42.
Terenty Shtykov
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Shtykovs support for Kim Il-sung was crucial in Kims rise to power, and the two persuaded Stalin to allow the Korean War to begin in June 1950. A protégé of the influential politician Andrei Zhdanov, General Shtykov served as a commissar during World War II. Through direct access to Joseph Stalin, Shtykov became the supreme ruler of North Korea. As the preeminent representative of the Soviet Unions political authority over the nascent North Korea from October 1945 until December 1950, the war they started freed Kim from Soviet domination, China intervened following North Koreas poor military performance in the early autumn. Shtykov was fired as ambassador in December and demoted to general the following month. He later served as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary from 1959 to 1960, several of Shtykovs policies, most notably North Korean land reform, are today credited to Kim Il-sung by official North Korean media. Shtykov was born in 1907 to a family of farmers in eastern Belorussia, in 1929 he joined the Communist Party in Leningrad and became a Komsomol activist. In 1938 Shtykov became the Second Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee, zhdanovs support allowed Shtykov to rise rapidly, he even briefly held a leading role in the Great Purge that September. During World War II, Shtykov served as a commissar in several fronts near Leningrad. By the end of the war he was one of only three Colonel general political commissars, as political commissar of the Far Eastern Front, Shtykov assisted Marshal Kirill Meretskov in accepting the surrender of Japan in northern Korea on August 19,1945. After the war, he was deputy commander of the Primorskiy Military District. Following the division of Korea, Joseph Stalin sought to turn northern Korea into a socialist buffer state between the Soviet bloc and the American occupation in the half of the peninsula. Shtykovs influence rose in tandem with the rise of his mentor Andrei Zhdanov, as member of the Military Council for the Primorskiy District, Shtykov frequently visited Pyongyang and communicated to Zhdanov and Stalin about developments on the Korean Peninsula. Shtykov exercised extremely close supervision over political events in North Korea on Stalins behalf. ”Shtykovs strong support of Kim Il-sung was decisive in Kims rise to power. Shtykov continued to be the preeminent power in the North after Kim was made chairman of the Provisional Peoples Committee for North Korea, in December 1946, Shtykov and two other Soviet generals designed the election results of the Assembly for the Provisional Committee. Without any Korean input, the decided the exact distribution of seats among the parties, the number of women members, and, more broadly. The original 1948 North Korean constitution was primarily authored by Stalin, the constitution only went into effect after the two had a lengthy discussion editing the draft, though some articles were later rewritten by Soviet supervisors. The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea was proclaimed after the withdrawal of Soviet forces in 1948, General Shtykov was the main instigator of North Koreas March 1946 land reform program, though Kim Il-sung usually gets the credit for it in both North and South Korea

43.
Mikhail Yasnov
–
Mikhail Alekseyevich Yasnov was a Soviet politician. He was Chairman of the Moscow City Executive Committee and head of Moscow in 1950–1956, in 1956–1957 he was the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Russian SFSR. Between 1957 and 1966 he was First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR, in 1950–1954 he was Chairman of the Soviet of the Union, the higher chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. He was made a Hero of Socialist Labor in 1976, article in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia

Mikhail Yasnov
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Mikhail Yasnov Михаил Яснов

44.
Ivan Bagramyan
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Ivan Khristoforovich Bagramyan, also known as Hovhannes Khachaturi Baghramyan, was a Soviet military commander and Marshal of the Soviet Union of Armenian origin. During World War II, Bagramyan was the first non-Slavic military officer to become a commander of a Front and he was among several Armenians in the Soviet Army who held the highest proportion of high-ranking officers in the Soviet military during the war. Bagramyans experience in planning as a chief of staff allowed him to distinguish himself as a capable commander in the early stages of the Soviet counter-offensives against Nazi Germany. He was given his first command of a unit in 1942, as commander of the Baltic Front, he participated in the offensives which pushed German forces out of the Baltic republics. He did not immediately join the Communist Party after the consolidation of the October Revolution, becoming a member only in 1941, a move atypical for a Soviet military officer. After the war, he served as a deputy member of the Supreme Soviets of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1952, he became a candidate for entry into the Central Committee and, in 1961, was inducted as a full member. For his contributions during the war, he was regarded as a national hero in the Soviet Union. Ivan Bagramyan was born to Armenian parents in the village of Chardakhlu, near Yelizavetpol, hamazasp Babadzhanian, a fellow Armenian who was to become the chief marshal of the Soviet Armor corps, was born in the same village. While Bagramyans father, Khachatur, went to all day at the railway station in Yelizavetpol, his mother, Mariam. Because his parents could not afford to send him to the local gymnasium and he graduated with honors and was slated to become a railway engineer within a few years when events in the First World War changed his life. Bagramyan was well aware of the situation at the Caucasus front during the first months of the world war. In the winter of 1914–15, the Imperial Russian Army was able to withstand and repel the Ottoman Empires offensive at Sarikamish and he desperately attempted to join the military effort but because he was only seventeen and a railway mechanic, he was not liable to be drafted. This did not dissuade him from trying, as he later remarked and his opportunity came on 16 September 1915, when he was accepted by the Russian Army as a volunteer. He was placed in the 116th Reserve Battalion and sent to Akhaltsikhe for basic training, with his training complete in December, he joined the Second Caucasus Frontier Regiment of the Russian Expeditionary Corps, which was sent to dislodge the Ottoman Turks in Persia. Bagramyan participated in battles in Asadabad, Hamedan and Kermanshah. But in order to attend the school, Bagramyan needed to satisfy the requirement of having completed school at a gymnasium. This did not deter him and, after preparing for the courses in Armavir, he passed his exams and he graduated in June 1917 and was assigned to the Third Armenian Infantry Regiment stationed near Lake Urmia. But with the overthrow of the Russian Provisional Government in the midst of the October Revolution of 1917, however, with the creation of the newly established First Republic of Armenia in 1918, Bagramyan enlisted in the Third Armenian Regiment of that countrys armed forces

Ivan Bagramyan
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Marshal Ivan Bagramyan
Ivan Bagramyan
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General deployments of Soviet and German forces during Operation Bagration in June 1944.
Ivan Bagramyan
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An equestrian statue of Marshal Bagramyan in Yerevan, standing in front of the American University of Armenia and next to the British embassy.